December 25, 2022 - Killer Winter Storm Rolls Across North America

Snow storm
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On December 22, 2022, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) acquired a false-color image of a vicious and frigid winter
storm as it rolled across the United States. On that date, a newscaster
reported that the storm stretched “from coast to coast and border to
border”, and this image proves that description to be true. However, it
was an understatement. Not only did the storm lay a tremendous wallop
on the Lower 48 U.S. states, but it also stretched northward to pummel
Canada.

In this type of false-color image, blue and shortwave infrared light
(MODIS bands 3,6,7) are used to highlight the different reflectivity of
snow, ice, clouds, and vegetation. The bold green marks areas of
vegetation, while bright red marks highly reflective and cold snow or
ice. Clouds appear white or, if they contain ice crystals, may look
light peach. The deep peach is most likely extremely cold cloud and
snow.

In the United States, the cross-country storm first wound up in the
Pacific Northwest on December 20, dropping up to two feet of snow in
the Cascade Mountains. By the next day, it was dropping both snow and
temperatures over the Rockies and the Great Plains. According to The
Weather Channel, temperatures in Denver, Colorado dropped 37 degrees in
only one hour, then dropped even more to settle about -24˚F (-31˚C)
early on December 22. After shutting down traffic across the Great
Plains, the storm intensified so rapidly that it met the criteria for a
"bomb cyclone”, which is a drop of at least 24 millibars (a measure of
atmospheric pressure) over 24 hours. A rapid drop in atmospheric
pressure creates an “explosive” storm that can carry super-strong,
damaging winds. The winds became very strong, indeed. A gust was
measured at 79 mph (127 km/h) at Buffalo-Niagara International Airport
on December 23.

The cold even reached the southern state of Florida, where lows of 14˚F
(-10˚C) are expected by the early morning hours of December 25. And on
December 24, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Energy Department
declared a power emergency in Texas, as some power plants began to
fail. Meanwhile, north of the border, every province and territory in
Canada had issued an emergency weather warning on December 24—a total
of 425 in all—as wind chills hit -50˚C (-58˚F) in some locations.
Across both countries, many thousands of airline flights were
cancelled, many traffic pile-ups were reported, schools were cancelled,
and people struggled to cope with the cold, wind, snow, and even
serious coastal storm surges. As of December 24, the storm has taken 20
lives in the United States.

Image Facts
Satellite: Terra
Date Acquired: 12/22/2022
Resolutions: 1km (4.4 MB),
Bands Used: 3,6,7
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2022-12-25

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