A Portrait of Ike’s Damage

The thermal satellite images, below, vividly illustrate the toll that the storm surge from Hurricane Ike took on vegetation in the Galveston, Texas area. In the top image, taken by NASA’s Terra satellite two years before the hurricane, areas of lush vegetation are depicted in red and hot pink. The bottom image, taken last Sunday two weeks after the hurricane, depicts in brown many square miles of vegetation destroyed by salt water from the storm surge, which reached 15 feet above sea level. The small island of pink surrounded by the denuded brown area is High Island, which was not inundated during the hurricane.