Already saturated from a heavier-than-normal summer monsoon season, rivers and reservoirs along Mexico’s Gulf coast swelled to overflowing in the wake of Tropical Storm Larry. The storm came ashore on October 5, 2003 and moved slowly across the Yucatan peninsula dumping as much as 20 inches of rain in coastal areas and 4-10 inches in the interior. See Tropical Depression Larry for rainfall totals between September 30 and October 7, 2003.
Clouds, light blue in this false color image, still lingered over the southern regions of Mexico’s Veracruz state on October 8, 2003 (top). Standing water appears dark blue and black, while vegetation is bright green. Bare earth is light pinkish tan. Running from the coast southwest across the peninsula, the San Juan River is most noticeably flooded in the top image. The Miguel Aleman Reservoir, center left, also appears to be much fuller that it was on May 5, 2003 (bottom).
Both of these false-color images were taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on the Terra satellite. The high-resolution image provided above is at MODIS’ maximum spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel.
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Image courtesy Jesse Allen, based on data from the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC
