Lights Out After Matthew—Southeast United States

After grazing Florida and Georgia, Hurricane Matthew plowed into South Carolina, southeast of McClellanville, as a Category 1 storm. Strong winds, falling trees, and storm surge flooding knocked out power in coastal areas of all three states. From space, the outages were clearly visible—and especially at night. The VIIRS DNB on the Suomi NPP satellite captured these three nighttime images of the Atlantic coast. The image on the left was acquired at 3:14 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on October 6, 2016; the middle image shows the same area at 3:14 a.m. on October 7; the right image was acquired at 2:14 a.m. on October 8. Infrared observations collected by the GOES East satellite were layered on the VIIRS data to make the clouds associated with Matthew more visible. Notice how many cities and towns on the eastern coast of Florida lost power on October 7. In particular, Flagler County, Florida, and Calhoun County, South Carolina, suffered many outages. The map is based on data from power companies on October 8, 2016.