Good morning,
The numbers coming out of Myanmar are stunning. Cyclone Nargis has killed more than 22-thousand people. Another 41-thousand are missing and up to a million may be homeless. Cyclone Nargis created huge Tidal Waves blamed for many of the deaths. Look below at the NASA satellite pictures. The first one taken on April 15th shows the shoreline along the Gulf of Martaban, notice the river deltas in the lower left of the picture. Then look at the picture below from May 5th.
Notice the same river deltas covered in water, the shoreline submerged, all the way north to the cities of Yangon and Pegu. With any hurricane or cyclone the greatest threat is the storm surge and of course the wind. Nargis made landfall with wind gusts clocked at 160 mph. Flood water can be difficult to see in photo-like satellite images, particularly when the water is muddy. This pair of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite use a combination of visible and infrared light to make floodwaters obvious. Water is blue or nearly black, vegetation is bright green, bare ground is tan, and clouds are white or light blue.
Amazing images to say the least.
Brett