29 October 2007
This Envisat image captures Noel moving westward across the Caribbean Sea. At the time of this acquisition, Noel was a tropical depression but formed into a tropical storm later on Sunday. Noel was projected to reach Haiti and the Dominican Republic early Monday morning before heading toward Cuba and the Bahamas.

Forecasters said Noel, the 14th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, has tropical storm force winds fanning 225 km from its centre and could unleash 25 to 50 centimeters of water on Hispaniola, southeastern Cuba and Jamaica.

Image acquired 28 October 2007 at 14:54 UTC by the MERIS (Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) instrument aboard ESA’s Envisat satellite while working in Full Resolution mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 metres. MERIS images are available on ESA’s MIRAVI website, which gives access to Envisat’s most recently acquired images.

MIRAVI, short for MERIS Images RApid VIsualisation, tracks Envisat around the globe, generates images from the raw data collected by MERIS and provides them online within two hours. MIRAVI is free and requires no registration.

Source: ESA - Observing the Earth

Tropical Storm Noel

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Tropical Depression 16 was intensifying into Tropical Storm Noel late in the morning of October 28, 2007, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image. Though still weak, the storm was beginning to take the distinct shape of a tropical cyclone. A dense circle of clouds converged over the Caribbean Sea just south of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and a long tail of clouds curled over Puerto Rico. Shadows cast by towering thunderstorm clouds make the cloud layer appear to be boiling in places.

At the time this image was acquired, Noel had winds of 65 kilometers per hour (40 miles per hour or 35 knots) with gusts to 83 km/hr (52 mph, 45 knots), said the National Hurricane Center. Despite relatively low wind speeds, the storm posed a serious threat to Hispaniola, the island encompassing the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The National Hurricane Center expected Noel to dump between 250 and 500 millimeters (10 and 20 inches) of rain on the island, with a few isolated areas receiving up to 760 mm (30 inches) of rain. The heavy rainfall has the potential to trigger deadly floods and mudslides. Tropical Storm Jeanne was just a tropical storm when its heavy rain caused extensive floods and mudslides that killed at least 1,500 Haitians in September 2004. Haiti is particularly vulnerable to flash flooding and landslides because of the widespread deforestation of its mountainous terrain.

The large image provided above is at MODIS’ maximum resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The image is available in additional resolutions from the MODIS Rapid Response System.

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC.

Source: NASA - Earth Observatory - Image of the Day

Though not the most powerful storm of the 2007 Atlantic Hurricane season, Tropical Storm Noel was among the most deadly. Only Category 5 Hurricane Felix and its associated flooding had a higher toll. The slow-moving Tropical Storm Noel inundated the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, and the Bahamas with heavy rain between October 28 and November 1, 2007. The resulting floods and mudslides left at least 115 dead and thousands homeless throughout the Caribbean, reported the Associated Press on November 2, 2007. The president of the Dominican Republic, the worst-hit nation, declared a state of emergency.

After crossing Hispaniola, the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, Noel moved over northern Cuba and then tracked northeast over the Bahamas. The storm was expected to strengthen into a Category 1 hurricane, move quickly north along the east coast of the United States, and strike Nova Scotia, Canada as an extra-tropical storm on November 4, said the National Hurricane Center.

Source: MODIS - Image of the Day

Tropical Storm Noel Floods the Dominican Republic

Large Images

November 6, 2007 (3.2 MB JPEG)

December 5, 2006 (3.6 MB JPEG)

Tropical Storm Noel pounded the Dominican Republic with heavy rain as it passed over the island on October 28 and October 29, 2007. The rainfall flooded low-lying areas, such as the area shown in this pair of images. The top image was captured by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer Terra satellite on November 6, 2007. A comparison of this image with one ASTER took a year earlier reveals how damaging Tropical Storm Noel was to the region.

The images show the city of Barahona and its surroundings in the southwestern Dominican Republic. The most obvious difference between the two images is the flooding around the Laguna del Rincón. The southern shore of the lake had expanded to the edge of the town of Carbal, the silver area on the southeast side of the lake. Settled areas on the western shore of the lake, also silver in the 2006 image, appear to be inundated in November 2007, and water sits over a road leading to the lake from the northwest. Floodwater appears to have made a new bay on the northeast side of the lake.

On the east, water from the swollen lake drains into the Bahía de Neiba. The straight edges of the temporary river suggest that it flows over farmland or that man-made dikes are channeling the water. Before draining into the bay, the flood cuts across an airport north of the city of Barahona, easily identifiable in this image by the long runway that runs diagonally to the bay.

Additional signs of flooding can be seen near the northern shore of the Bahía de Neiba. Here the land has a slightly wrinkled appearance suggestive of mountains or hills. In the top image, much of the area is light purple, slightly paler than the water. This is either flood water choked with mud, a slick of mud left behind after the flood receded, or a landslide. A square of dark blue stands out in the flood/landslide region. This is likely a shrimp farm that had been surrounded by walls high enough to keep the floods out. The flooded area extends north, covering some of the fields that make up the grid of farmland along the top of the image.

As of November 6, 85 people had been reported dead in floods throughout the Dominican Republic with an additional 48 missing, said the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The floods damaged more than 350,000 cultivated areas and damaged or destroyed 16,652 houses. In the province shown in this image, seventy percent of coffee production was affected by the flooding, said OCHA.

You can download a 15-meter-resolution KMZ file of the flooding suitable for use with Google Earth.

NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team.

Source: NASA - Earth Observatory - Image of the Day