Flash Flooding in Iran

Heavy rain starting on January 9, 2020, have led to flash floods across the Hormozgan, Kerman, and Sistan-Baluchestan provinces in southern Iran. The floods have destroyed thousands of houses, displaced hundreds of people, and caused at least three fatalities.

The false-color image pair above shows rain across the three provinces before (left) and after the bout of rain (right). The images were acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite (bands 7-2-1) on January 8, 2020, and January 13, 2020. According to a news report, more than 100 millimeters (4 inches) of rain fell in three days in Sistan-Baluchestan—the amount that typically falls during a full year in the region.

• References and Further Reading

• European Space Agency (2020, January 15) Flooding in southern Iran. Accessed January 15, 2020.
• Financial Tribune (2020, January 15) Floods Create Havoc in Iranian Southern Regions. Accessed January 15, 2020.
• ReliefWeb (2020, January 15) Iran-Floods (IRIMO, Copernicus EMS, Floodlist, media) (ECHO Daily Flash of 15 January 2020). Accessed January 15, 2020.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Text by Kasha Patel.

Published January 15, 2020
Data acquired January 8 - 13, 2020

Source:

Aqua > MODIS