Mud Creek landslide along the California coast

By Scott Bachmeier • 22 May 2017

As seen in the Tweet above from NWS San Francisco Bay Area, a major landslide occurred along the California coast in the Big Sur area (at Mud Creek) during the nighttime hours on 20 May 2017. A large portion of coastal Highway 1 was closed by the massive amount of debris.

A timely overpass of the Landsat-8 satellite at 1840 UTC on 22 May (along with the cooperation of a gap in cloudiness) provided 30-meter resolution false-color Red/Green/Blue (RGB) imagery (source) which showed the landslide debris extending off the coast and into the adjacent nearshore water of the Pacific Ocean (below). Before/after photos of the landslide site can be seen here.

Landsat-8 false-color images [click to enlarge]

Categories: Landsat, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images