The U.S. central plains region -- nicknamed Tornado Alley -- suffers the highest frequency of tornadoes in the world [source: Tarbuck]. Many of these twisters leave death, injury and destruction in their wake, but one stands in a class by itself.
Sweeping out from southeastern Missouri on March 18, 1925, the Tri-State Tornado careened across the southern tip of Illinois before dissipating in lower Indiana. Remarkably, these three locales lie 219 miles (352 kilometers) apart, and the tornado traveled this distance in just three and a half hours [source: SEMP].
With up to 155-mph winds, Hurricane Iota smashed record books on Nov. 16 as the strongest hurricane ever recorded to make landfall in Nicaragua. Iota reached Category 5 strength before making landfall as a Category 4 storm near the town of Haulover, Nicaragua.
The onslaught of destructive winds and heavy rainfall was unfortunately familiar to a region that recently suffered another Category 4 landfalling storm – Hurricane Eta – just two weeks earlier. Eta was a Category 4 storm with 140-mph winds when it landed in Nicaragua on Nov. 3 before ripping a wide path of destruction through Honduras and Guatemala.
Heavy rainfall from these two storm systems brought widespread flooding to the region, triggered large and numerous landslides in Guatemala and Honduras, and was responsible for numerous casualties.
NASA’s Earth Applied Sciences Disasters Program supports disaster response and risk reduction efforts throughout the world — before, during, and after disasters strike – and is working to aid Central America with the impacts from these storms.
In the case of Eta and Iota, the Program is using imagery and data from Earth-observing satellites to provide scientific analysis to Guatemala’s National Coordinator for Disaster Reduction and is working with the Coordination Center for Disaster Prevention in Central America. The multi-agency collaboration is assisting local governments in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, Costa Rica, and Panama. The Program is also working with U.S. Southern Command to provide situational awareness for potential emergency humanitarian assistance.
