Looking inward to the oil spill in the Gulf. Click for larger. Image credit: Jeff Schmaltz MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

Kind of a quick post, we got snow overnight – some places up to 20 inches!  The power is out and I’m trying to get this down while the generator is running.  Temperatures are forecast to reach 80 by the weekend.

You may have seen this on the news, this is the oil leak from the damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico.  The image comes from the Modis Satellite.  The latest plan I heard about was to light the oil and burn it off before any damage is done to coastal areas.

Here’s what the Modis site had to say:

An estimated 42,000 gallons of oil per day were leaking from an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico in late April, following an explosion at an offshore drilling rig on April 20, 2010. The rig eventually capsized and sank.

These images of the affected area were captured on April 25 by the MODIS on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The Mississippi Delta is at image center, and the oil slick is a silvery swirl to the right. The oil slick may be particularly obvious because it is occurring in the sunglint area, where the mirror-like reflection of the Sun off the water gives the Gulf of Mexico a washed-out look.

The initial explosion killed eleven people and injured several others, and a fire burned at the location for more than a day until the damaged oil rig sank. An emergency response effort is underway to stop the flow of oil and contain the existing slick before it reaches wildlife refuges and beaches in Louisiana and Mississippi.

The slick may contain dispersant or other chemicals that emergency responders are using to control the spread of the oil, and it is unknown how much of the 700,000 gallons of fuel that were on the oil rig burned in the fire and how much may have spilled into the water when the platform sank.

On April 25, 2010, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Emergency Response Division issued the following update on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident in the Gulf of Mexico: “An attempt to control the leaking well using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) was not successful, and the well continues to leak.”