Mystery on satellite image - Eastern Arkansas

Tim Vasquez

Tim Vasquez

EF5
Joined
Dec 4, 2003
Messages
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Any idea what this feature is in eastern Arkansas? This has been puzzling me all day. It looks vaguely like fog but animation shows no erosion at all. It's a static feature! Also it does not seem to exist in the river valleys; it's mostly out on the plateaus. It looks almost like cropland that's turned into salt flats or something.

There is a satellite loop here (until after dark):
http://weather.cod.edu/analysis/loops/satl...ter.pl?Arkansas

If we can't figure it out I'll tell you for sure soon... I'm in Dayton OH and will be flying over that area tomorrow afternoon back to DFW.

Tim

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Maybe it's albedo from the tattered rags of millions of zombies, risen from the mud of the Mississippi Delta. Are we getting any news out of Memphis?

Tim
 
Odd indeed... It shows up nicely on IR imagery and IR reflectance imagery as well. Sfc obs indicate that is certainly isn't fog. Ya got me...
 
That is really interesting! No reports of fog, no reports for cloudcover even that I saw on the surface obs. But, yet it is continuously there throughout the day... Nice catch there and hope that we can figure out an answer.
 
Someone forgot to add "sat space bug-X" to the camera lens this spring :p
 
Odd indeed... It shows up nicely on IR imagery and IR reflectance imagery as well. Sfc obs indicate that is certainly isn't fog. Ya got me...
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Click to expand...

Whatever it is it matches up perfectly in the flat terrain. Not sure what crops they have there but I noticed some crops I'd never seen before in sw MO March 12. They had white stuff on them(cotton I'm guessing). Is it possible it's cotton?
 
Cotton
AR_cotton-550c.jpg


Another Image
 
If you run a Google Earth image of the Mississippi valley in Arkansas, there looks to be a lot of near white farm grids (hit 'refresh' once if the image doesn't load completely the first time). Can't imagine rice or cotton reflecting that much white, though - guess if it's in full bloom and that is all they grow in the river bottoms it might show up on satellite, but that is just really bizarre ... and very interesting. It must be cotton, but the strange thing is how nebulous it appears on vis sat, which really makes it look like fog hanging over the rivers. Going to bug me now till someone comes to a conclusion -
 
I couldn't imagine cotton being that white all of the sudden and is it cotton season anyway right now? If that is cotton then that would be the first time that I've heard of such a thing and apparently quite a few others haven't heard of that before either...
 
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