Heavy rains brought on widespread flooding across western Romania and northern Serbia, particularly along the Timis River. The floods are clearly visible in these images, collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA�s Terra satellite on April 23, 2005, (top) and April 16, 2005 (bottom). Presented in false color to increase the contrast between water and the surrounding landscape, the images show water in dark blue, vegetation in green, bare earth in brown, and clouds and snow in light blue.
In the week that passed between April 16 and April 23, the Timis River has swollen to cover wide tracts of land, with the worst of the flooding in Romania just east of the border. According to media reports, the floodwaters seen here cover 30,000 hectares of farmland and as many as 2,500 houses. Across the border in Serbia, 700 houses have been completely flooded, and 100 houses have been destroyed, reports the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent.
Flooding is apparent along other rivers in the region. The Caras River has expanded, as have a number of smaller rivers between the Caras and the Timis River. The storms that filled the rivers also brought new snow to the mountains of Romania, which are covered in light blue snow on April 23.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the MODIS Rapid Response team.
