Alarming Satellite GIFs Show Russia's Extreme Flooding
The Russian-Chinese border is practically a lake now. LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC Since mid-August, floods have plagued the Amur River region, the dividing line between eastern Russia and China. Chinese state media have called it the worst flooding in a century. Here's what the flooding has looked like near Komsomolsk-on-Amur, a city of 500,000 in Russia's far eastern region. The first false-color image above, from NASA's Aqua satellite, taken on August 17 of last year, shows a normal water level for the season. The second, filled with inky splotches of water, shows the flood levels on September 8 of this year. The water levels a little downstream in Khabarovsk, right next to the Chinese border, have risen to a record 8.1 meters high. Here's what the flooding looked like on the Songhua River, a Chinese tributary of the Amur, on August 30 of this year compared with...