NASA MODIS Image of the Day: January 29, 2007 – Floods in Australia (2)
A large, soaking storm drenched a huge swath of the Australian Outback in the third week of January 2007. Major floods affected the arid interior of the country in several states and territories, including Northern Territory, South Australia, and Queensland. Rivers that are usually little more than a string of pools rushed out of their banks, flooded small rural towns, and cut off roads to the outside world.
This image of southwestern Queensland shows flooding in a region known as the Channel Country was captured by the MODIS on the Terra satellite on January 24, 2007. If you move your mouse over the image, you will see a different image of the same area, from the MODIS on the Aqua satellite, from January 10, 2007. The images use visible and infrared light detected by MODIS to make flooded areas more obvious than they would be in a photo-like image. Standing water is blue, vegetation is green, and bare or very sparsely vegetated ground is pinkish tan.
On January 10, before the rains, dry river and stream channels traced faint gray-green paths across the landscape, which appears virtually barren of other vegetation. On January 24, the flooded rivers and streams leap out from the landscape in bright blue. Vegetation in the surrounding countryside appears to be springing back to life, with a faint green tinge spreading across the underlying pinkish-tan terrain.
