US East coast bomb cyclone, 2018, satellite image

False-colour satellite image of a large storm system (top right) off the East coast of the USA in the early morning of 4th January 2018. Cooler areas are blue to white, warmer areas are purple to yellow. The storm was undergoing a rapid drop in pressure, dropping over 53 millibars in 21 hours, classifying it as an explosive cyclogenesis, or bomb cyclone. The storm bought freezing temperatures, high winds and large amounts of snow to the East coast of the USA and Canada. The day before this image was taken the storm had moved over Tallahassee, Florida, bringing the first snowfall in three decades. Throughout the storm hundreds of thousands were left without power, thousands of flights were cancelled and 22 people were killed. Data obtained by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite.