January 22, 2022 - Winter in the Adirondacks

Winter

A blanket of snow across northeastern New York and southeastern Canada in mid-January 2022 highlights the unique region known as the Adirondacks. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of the snowy scene on January 20. The Adirondack Mountains appear as a rugged, almost snow-free circular region lying east of Lake Ontario and west of blue Lake Champlain. The long line of the Green Mountains of Vermont, part of the Appalachian Mountains, can be seen just east of Lake Champlain.

Unlike many mountain ranges which appear as long chains, the Adirondack Mountains form a circular dome that is clearly different than the surrounding landscape, including nearby Green Mountains of Vermont. Older than the Adirondacks, the birth of the Green Mountains began about 440-480 million years ago, as plate tectonics pushed Earth’s land together into a massive supercontinent, causing uplift of the Appalachians. In contrast, the Adirondacks are composed of rock that was formed more than a billion years ago from sediment in an ancient seafloor, but the mountains themselves began to uplift about five million years ago. The Adirondacks continue to rise two to three millimeters per year.

Image Facts
Satellite: Terra
Date Acquired: 1/20/2022
Resolutions: 1km (346.6 KB), 500m (1002.8 KB), 250m (815.1 KB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC