English: On January 16, 2019, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of the Southeastern United States. This broad view of a winter’s day includes six states. From west to east and north to south they are: Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, and northern Florida.

Several notable features are easily seen from space. The gray pixels that mark the Atlanta, Georgia metro area expand outward from the center in a sprawling, spider web-like pattern. To the northwest of Atlanta, waving folds of green and tan mark the Appalachian Mountains which stretch to the northeast from Cheaha Mountain in Alabama to Belle Island, Canada.

In the southwest, a thick band of muddy water pours from Mobile Bay into the Gulf of Mexico. Heavy rains have filled both the Alabama River and the Tombigbee this winter, bringing them well above flood stage. Both rivers pour into the northern point of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, creating flood conditions there as well. Local reports reported that in early January, heavy rains had transformed the Delta into a 13-mile-wide river as the Alabama River crested at 50.8 feet at the Claiborne Dam, one of the highest levels recorded since 1972, the year the dam was built. On January 20, the National Weather Service published warnings for continued flooding in many of Alabama’s rivers.