NOAA SATELLITE CAPTURES MIDDLE EAST SAND STORMS

March 25, 2003 — A NOAA polar-orbiting satellite captured sand storms in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. There was too much cloud cover of Iraq to see the sand storms in that region. The NOAA satellite image shows large sand storms spread over a wide area of Saudi Arabia. (Click NOAA image for larger view of sand storms in Saudi Arabia, taken March 25, 2003, at 2:41 a.m. EST. Click here for image without annotations. Please credit “NOAA.)

This image was produced from data taken by the NOAA-17 satellite on March 25 at 2:41 a.m. EST (10:41 a.m. Iraq local time). The image measures 1024 x 1074 pixels with NOAA annotations. NOAA-17 is a polar-orbiting NOAA satellite, which flies at about 520 miles above the Earth in an almost north-south orbit.

These images were processed by the NOAA Operational Significant Event Imagery, part of NOAA Satellites and Information.

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Greg Hernandez, NOAA, (202) 482-3091