Rare winter storm covers Spain in snow
Rare winter storm covers Spain in snow. Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory shows extreme snowfall across Spain, where the capital city of Madrid has barely seen any snow for the last ten years.
An intense winter storm dumped more than a foot and a half of snow across the region, which is the most snow that this area has experienced in five decades.
Rural areas of central, northern, and eastern Spain received up to 20 inches of snow, while southern parts of the country were battered with torrential rainfall and flooding.
According to NASA, nearly 700 streets and highways were left impassable by the snowstorm and hundreds of people were stranded in cars overnight. Through January 14, cold temperatures are expected that could freeze much of this snow into ice.
The image was captured in the early afternoon on January 11, 2021 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southwestern Europe with some pockets of territory across the Strait of Gibraltar and the Atlantic Ocean. Its continental European territory is situated on the Iberian Peninsula. Its territory also includes two archipelagos: the Canary Islands off the coast of North Africa, and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The African enclaves of Ceuta, Melilla, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, makes Spain the only European country to have a physical border with an African country.
Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer
