NASA Captures Devastating Tennessee Floods From Space After Winter Storm Drenches Region

A large winter storm system that moved across the East Coast over the weekend caused serious floods in Tennessee and Kentucky, as seen in newly released NASA satellite images. The images show the Mississippi River’s serpentine path in western Tennessee and eastern Arkansas and Missouri. They also show the rivers and water bodies east of the Mississippi—in Tennessee—inundated by up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain over a 48-hour period. A state of emergency was declared in Tennessee after a levee failure near the town of Rives, on the Obion River, which is the overflowed waterway in the top-right of the above image. It was a wild week for weather. More than half the states were hit with winter weather advisories, while 11 states received flash flood watches. On the west coast, California was slammed with mudslide-triggering rains. The serious flood conditions in Tennessee and Kentucky were severe enough to be visible from space. NASA’s Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI-2) on the age ... Read full article.