Hurricane Ian lifted sediment from the seafloor

Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory shows colorful swirls of sediment along the southwestern coast of Florida in the wake of Hurricane Ian. The image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on October 1, 2022, a few days after landfall.

“On September 28, 2022, Hurricane Ian barreled into Florida’s southwestern coast as a powerful category-4 storm with sustained winds of about 150 miles (240 kilometers) per hour. But wind was not the only destructive component of the storm; water was also a major factor, in the form of storm surge, relentless downpours, and flooding,” says NASA.

“The redistribution of water is evident in these natural-color satellite images, which show colorful swirls of sediment that the storm stirred up in Florida’s coastal waters. The turquoise color is likely sediment that the storm Ian lifted from the seafloor as it neared the coast. Brown water closer to shore is likely colored by sediment from land, carried by rivers and runoff flowing into the ocean.”

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory 

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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer