Post Hurricane Irma Imagery from Google Crisis Response

Google has collected a range of new imagery from some of the worst hit spots in the Caribbean through to some of the Bahamas. Included are: Barbuda, Antigua, St Martin, Anguilla, BVIs, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, and some of the Bahamas. The St Martin imagery is very cloudy, so not very useful. Most of the imagery is from Digital Globe satellites.

NOTE: This is a Google Earth KML with imagery overlays. If you are an experienced Google Earth desktop users you are probably fine. But, it may take some getting used to if you haven't used these types of overlays. The link below is for the desktop version of Google Earth ONLY and contains sometimes overlapping layers. You have to peruse the directory structure to find the links to each imagery dataset and turn them on/off to avoid overlaps when needed. You can also use the "Transparency" slider while selecting the chosen imagery to compare before/after.

Here is the link:  mw1.google.com/crisisresponse/2017/hurricane-irma/2017-hurricane-irma-updated-imagery-nl.kml

The Barbuda and Tortola BVIs imagery is particularly dramatic.

gosh! -so event was not so nice as it was from above...):  might be said: Irma was definitely rude.

thanks kml!

Below quotation from today's IOTD article at earthobservatory.nasa.gov:

Hurricane Irma Turns Caribbean Islands Brown



Hurricane Irma churned across the Atlantic Ocean in September 2017, battering several Caribbean islands before moving on to the Florida Keys and the U.S. mainland. As the clouds cleared over places like the Virgin Islands, the destruction became obvious even from space.

These natural-color images, captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite, show some of Irma’s effect on the British and U.S. Virgin Islands. The views were acquired on August 25 and September 10, 2017, before and after the storm passed. They are among the few relatively cloud-free satellite images of the area so far.

The most obvious change is the widespread browning of the landscape. There are a number of possible reasons for this. Lush green tropical vegetation can be ripped away by a storm’s strong winds, leaving the satellite with a view of more bare ground. Also, salt spray whipped up by the hurricane can coat and desiccate leaves while they are still on the trees.

Irma passed the northernmost Virgin Islands on the afternoon of September 6. At the time, Irma was a category 5 storm with maximum sustained winds of 185 miles (295 kilometers) per hour. According to news reports, the islands saw “significant devastation.”



A close-up of Virgin Gorda gives a better sense of the changes. Note how some of the vegetation on the south and west of the island is a bit greener, likely because it was partly shielded from winds by the hills in the center. Differences in ocean color likely stem from differences in the ocean surface; rougher surfaces scatter more light, and appear brighter and lighter.

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