Severe flooding affected multiple communities along Australia’s
Queensland-New South Wales border in early February 2012. The
Australian Associated Press reported on February 5 that several
thousand residents were isolated and cut off by a “virtual
inland sea.” The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the top image on
February 6, 2012. For comparison, the bottom image shows the
same region on January 3, 2012. These images use a combination
of visible and infrared light to better distinguish between
water and land. Water varies from electric blue to navy.
Vegetation is bright green. Bare ground is earth-toned. Clouds
are pale blue-green. A network of permanent and impermanent
rivers stretches through this part of Australia. The Balonne,
Barwon, and Namoi are all tributaries of the Darling River,
which flows toward the southwest through New South Wales. Water
actually appears higher in the Barwon River in early January
than it does a month later. But almost al