Heavy Snow in Central Chile In what the interior minister
described as a “white earthquake,” heavy snow blanketed parts of
Chile in July 2011. Snow was 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) deep in the
city of Lonquimay, CNN reported. Santiago Times reported that
some areas received four months’ worth of snowfall in just four
days. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)
on NASA’s Terra satellite captured images of the region around
Lonquimay on July 22, 2011 (shown image), and July 8, 2011.
Using visible and infrared light, these images better
distinguish between snow and clouds than a natural-color image
would. Snow and ice are bright red or red-orange. Clouds range
in color from off-white to peach. Vegetation is green. Both
images show winter conditions but, compared to the image from
July 8, the scene from July 22 shows snow blanketing a
significantly larger area around Lonquimay. On July 22, fog
fills multiple valleys in between the snow-capped peaks. The
Araucanía region in central Chile included some