That Is a Lot of Snow

For the contiguous United States of America, January saw snow reach every one of the 50 states except for Florida.

The image comes courtesy of NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, showing the maximum snow cover for the month. The data shows that about 71 percent of the entire country had snow on the ground, which ranks it as the fifth-largest snow cover extent over the past 45 years.

The image shows not just snow extent, but also the length of time that the snow stayed on the ground, with areas that are white portraying snow that lay on the ground for most of the month of January, and pale green areas showing snow that stayed for only part of the month, or were only partly snowy. The dark green patches are areas where MODIS did not find any snow on the ground.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory’s Image of the Day

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