Halloween Weekend Snow Paints a Ghostly Picture in the U.S. Northeast

Written by Rob Gutro
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – A late October snowstorm from a Nor’easter blanketed the eastern U.S. from West Virginia to Maine and broke records the weekend before Halloween Monday. NASA’s Aqua satellite flew over the region on October 30th after the snow was ending in New England and captured the ghostly blanket of white.

A high pressure area located over southeastern Canada was responsible for bringing in cold air and that combined with a low near the North Carolina coast this weekend. The result was an unusual snowstorm from West Virginia to Maine.

As the low moved north, the winds picked up in New England creating heavy wet snow and gusty winds that took down trees and power lines. More than 3 million people were without power over the weekend and many are still without power. Snowfall ranged from a trace near Washington, D.C. to 27 inches in Plainfield, located in western Massachusetts.

When NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over the northeastern U.S. on October 30th, 2011 at 11:30am EDT, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured a detailed image of the ghostly snowfall. The image clearly shows the snow on the ground from West Virginia to Maine along the U.S. East coast. The image was created at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.

Although the snowfall is over, the damage will haunt New Jersey, Connecticut, western Massachusetts and parts of New York, who were hardest hit.