The famous port of Acapulco, Guerrero, suffered one of the worst blows in its history due to the passage of the Hurricane Otis last October 25, that has left so far 47 dead and 56 missing.
Otis went from being a tropical storm until becoming a hurricane of category 5 in just over 12 hours, hence broke intensification record of a cyclone in Mexico.
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Satellite photos of Acapulco before and after Otis
The hurricane unleashed torrential floods and ground slides, in addition to knock down power lines, which left the port completely cut off.
Apart from its devastating impact on the population with the loss of life as well as property, the storm caused damage to the surrounding tropical forest.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as The NASA, published two photographs taken with his Landsat 8 satellite that show the before and after the landscape after the passage of Otis.
It is observed that landscape nearly the city changes and the vegetation, once green and lush, completely changed to a brown color.
The image on the left is September 21, 2023 and the image on the right is October 31.
Hurricane damage to tropical forests
According to NASA, Hurricanes often disturb temperate and tropical forests of coastal regions in North and Central America.
The damage to the vegetation in the mountains outside Acapulco is especially notable in the photos revealed by Landsat.
Trees at high elevations and on steep slopes are more likely to suffer damage during storms because they are more exposed to high wind speeds.
Jess Zimmerman professor of ecology at University of Puerto Rico, has studied how the composition of trees changes after hurricanes, so after reviewing the images, he pointed out that the damage “They were undoubtedly due to the hurricane.”
It is thanks to this type of photos that experts can later estimate the damage caused due to these types of natural disasters.
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It should be noted that the area of NASA Applied Earth Sciences Program Disasters has been activated in support of people affected by Hurricane Otis.
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