Near real time satellite imagery???

Does anybody know where to find near real-time satellite imagery. The base-layers of the weather images and google earth are typically "always summer". I would like to find some imagery that can help me with route finding in intermittent snow or intermittent water conditions (depending on whether skiing or kayaking). I have found only one product so far, "World" something from NASA but the resolution is much too low.

Ideas??

thank you

If you just want to find satellite images of an area in different seasons, I recommend Planet Labs' Explorer tool .  You can look at composite satellite images of nearly the entire Earth that are generated once per quarter.  Unfortunately the Jan-March 2017 images haven't been released yet. You can look at high resolution (3-5 m/px) images taken every few days up to two weeks before present day in California only; so if you are planning trips in the Sierras this could be a very good resource.

There are two obvious problems with near-real-time satellite imagery:

(1) It's expensive

(a) There is a resolution/field of view tradeoff, meaning satellites can either look at small areas in detail or large areas in less detail; if you want to look at a large area in detail you need to either do multiple passes with one satellite or have multiple satellies.  Orbits that are handy for looking at high latitudes are also more expensive to get into than equatorial orbits.

(b) High resolution implies large file size, and larger files are harder (more expensive) to get back to Earth

(2) Clouds

Thank you Todd, That sounds like a handy app so long as I need it shortly after it was updated.

I have found a few sites where I can purchase very expensive recent imagery. Backs up what you are saying about the images being expensive to produce.

thanks again.

You can look at raw Landsat images here, but be warned, they're not actually all that useful without all the processing that gets done before it gets to something like Google Maps. You have to be lucky enough to have the satellite pass over your area of interest around your date of interest, and for it not to be cloudy at that point.

Select your date range and max allowable cloud cover (I chose 100% to see all available) in the "load images" popup and pan around in the Viewer. For March, there are 3 passes of around the Eastern Cascades, but much of it is obscured by clouds.

landsatlook.usgs.gov/viewer.html

Hi, what you are looking for is named MODIS Rapid Response. They have two satellites named Terra and Aqua. I've been using them for years.

Please note, that the name of this subset in the URL is wrong... The island it's centered on is SATURNA, not Saturn.

lance3.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/su...aturn_Island.2017095

This service is for tracking forest fires (over the Entire earth, not just USA) in the summertime, so please do not abuse this service. It's ultimately ran by the US govt at an IT layer as far as I'm aware, so do not hammer the server with constant downloads.

This is another good subset:
lance3.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/su...A1.2017095.terra.1km

Realize that these can go down to 250M resolution.

I also like this overview page:
lance3.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?area=na

You can get more subsets here:
earthdata.nasa.gov/earth-observation-dat...sponse/modis-subsets

Hope this helps,
Chris

Isn't this the same data as in EOSDIS worldview? I thought that was the original product the OP referenced. Worldview definitely uses Terra and Aqua, but is only updated once per day I think. Maybe MODIS RR is higher resolution as well?

worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=geograph...5,213.38462275459077

cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/04/new-goes-...ite-imagery.html?m=1

Some links in the comments to dig thru. Lots of great resolution on the clouds blocking that route I want to see...

Isn't this the same data as in EOSDIS worldview? I thought that was the original product the OP referenced. Worldview definitely uses Terra and Aqua, but is only updated once per day I think. Maybe MODIS RR is higher resolution as well?

I believe that MODIS has higher resolution, at 250M capability. Also, you can direct download specific images with MODIS. But the actual data that both reference looks to be the same.

cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/04/new-goes-...tellite-imagery.html

I love Cliff Mass's blog and have not had a chance to read many of his posts from the last month, thanks for sharing this news!