Over the past two weeks, heavy rains have inundated southern Russia, giving rise to floods that killed up to 83 people and drove thousands from their homes. This false-color image acquired on June 23, 2002, by the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite shows some of the worst flooding. The Black Sea is the dark patch in the lower left-hand corner. The city of Krasnodor, Russia, which was one of the cities hardest hit, sits on the western edge of the larger lake on the left side of the image, and Stavropol, which lost more lives than any other city, sits just east of the small cluster of lakes on the right-hand side of the image. Normally, the rivers and smaller lakes in this image cannot even be seen clearly on MODIS imagery.
In this false-color image, the ground is green and blue and water is black or dark brown. Clouds come across as pink and white.
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Image courtesy Jesse Allen, NASA GSFC, based on data provided by the MODIS Rapid Response System.
