Myanmar Cyclone: Before and After
This weekend, Cyclone Nargis pounded the Southeast Asian country of Myanmar (aka Burma), killing an estimated 60,000 people thus far.
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This weekend, Cyclone Nargis pounded the Southeast Asian country of Myanmar (aka Burma), killing an estimated 60,000 people thus far. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), a visual-infrared instrument on NASA's Terra satellite, documented the extent of the flooding in a pair of images. The earlier photo shows Myanmar on April 15; crisp boundaries separate the dark blue rivers from the green- and tan-colored landmasses. In the later image, the cyclone has come ashore at the mouths of the Irrawaddy River [lower left] and swept northeast, flooding the whole southern region and dumping turquoise-tinted runoff into the Gulf of Martaban. NASA says that images like these will aid recovery efforts by showing emergency responders where to focus.
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