I have a short post today to show you another unique way of using the Day-Night Band on the Suomi NPP VIIRS instrument. By having this low-light band available, it will now be possible to monitor the extent of power outages from space! The short animation below (click on image to animate) shows the NYC/NJ area days before Sandy’s arrival and last night. As you can see, there are many areas of northern-coastal NJ that are in the dark still and possibly will be for days or weeks. The last report I heard from family in coastal NJ is that some people may not get power for up to a month! Meanwhile, some towns like Pt. Pleasant, parts of Toms River down to Atlantic City are slowly getting their power back. The barrier islands will not have power or access for a long, long time.

Suomi NPP VIIRS Day-Night Band image showing before and after power outage effects in NYC and NJ. The image is courtesy of William Straka III from CIMSS/SSEC at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I plan on having a few GOES-14 SRSO and RGB Air Mass animations ready for post tomorrow or early next week, so stay tuned!