NASA Releases Image of US Deadly Winter Storm From Space

A huge winter storm has wreaked havoc across the U.S., sending gusts of powerful winds and heavy rain and snow pelting down onto millions of people in the Midwest and East Coast.

Images taken from the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the NOAA-20 satellite on January 9 reveal the scale of the massive storm's clouds as they engulfed the region.

At least five people have been reported to have died in Alabama, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina as a result of the stormy weather, and hundreds of thousands of people had power outages.

"Winter storms form from strong temperature gradients and in the presence of strong upper level waves in atmospheric flow," Esther Mullens, an assistant professor of Geography at the University of Florida, told Newsweek. "Large atmospheric troughs or low pressure accompanied by strong winds at high altitude help to lower pressure at the surface and create these large mid-latitude cyclones. These storms are thousands of miles across and can have multiple types of hazardous weather within them. Closer to the center of the low pressure and wrapping around the northern edge the cold airmass allows for winter weather, while along and ahead of the trailing cold front thunderstorms can form where the air is warm and moist."

The National Weather Service (NWS) had issued blizzard warnings for Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Washington and Wyoming, and up to 15 inches of snowfall was recorded in parts of Iowa. Several inches of rain fell across New England, with flash floods swamping streets and leading to evacuations along the Yantic River in New Jersey and Connecticut. Powerful winds and tornadoes buffeted the Southeast, including Florida and Georgia, with one wind gust reaching 93 mph in Albany, Georgia, on January 9.

"A robust winter storm has a large number of hazards," Jana Houser, an associate professor of meteorology at Ohio State University, told Newsweek. "Here we can experience, thunderstorms with tornadoes, and very strong winds, and occasionally hail, although that happens less frequently in the winter than it does in the summer. Then they often move up the coast and cause coastal, flooding and beach erosion. The systems often have a lot of moisture to work with so inland flooding from the rains of the storm is also common. Then, depending upon the temperature configuration, these storms can also prove blizzard conditions, and very heavy snowfall. So you got a pot of everything!"

Another powerful storm is due to hit the Midwest and the East Coast from Friday onwards, bringing even more cold temperatures, snow, and strong winds. Up to 12 inches of snow are being forecast for parts of Wisconsin and Michigan, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), with wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph expected near the Great Lakes. Wind chills of as low as minus 30 degrees are also predicted for the region.

"Heavy snow is expected in the Midwest with a powerful winter storm. The greatest confidence in heavy snow exists in southern and eastern Wisconsin, and western and northern Lower Michigan, where over 12 inches of snow is likely (60-80 percent), causing considerable disruption," the NWS said in a statement on Thursday.

"Strong winds will spread into the Midwest and Great Lakes on Friday and Saturday with the unusually powerful low pressure system. This will make blizzard conditions possible, particularly in exposed areas. Winds will increase on Friday night and the drastically reduced visibility will make travel dangerous to impossible. Wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph may also lead to some power outages," the NWS said. "Severe thunderstorms will be possible Thursday and Friday in the Gulf Coast and Southeast. Another round of rain in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast will lead to renewed rises on rivers and streams and possibly flooding. Moderate coastal flooding is also likely in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast."

The Pacific Northwest is also due some wintery destruction as it's hit by atmospheric river storms, with a blizzard warning being placed for Seattle, and heavy snowfall and powerful winds being forecast for Washington and Oregon.

"Climate change will likely exacerbate these types of storm scenarios. An increasingly warm climate will have a particularly strong effect on the ocean temperatures. As ocean temperatures warm over the summer months, this heat is retained much longer than heat in the air is, so moving into winter months , the ocean temperatures will be higher now and in the future than they were 50 years ago," Houser said.

"The incredible cold in Canada and other polar regions is still likely to occur even in warming climate scenarios, because there is simply no incoming light. This creates a scenario where the temperature contrast between the warm ocean temperatures and the cold, polar and arctic air masses is actually going to increase in the future. The increase in the contrast will provide even more energy to developing low pressure systems, causing them to be more intense than they might otherwise have been in a non-climate change scenario."

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Update 01/12/24, 11:39 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comments from Esther Mullens and Jana Houser.