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With miles of sandy beaches and generally good weather, coastal North Carolina isn’t a place you would usually expect to find snow. But the view from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on February 14, 2010, shows snow extending to the Outer Banks. The sandy islands, normally pale tan, are bright white in this image. Harkers Island received 8.8 inches of snow, reported CNN. The snow fell in a winter storm that moved across the southern United States from Texas to the Atlantic Coast on February 12-13.

The highest resolution version of this image is provided above. The image is available in additional resolutions from the MODIS Rapid Response System.

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Holli Riebeek.