English: On December 27, 2018, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite flew over the west coast of the United States and acquired a true-color image of Northern California and southern Oregon.

San Francisco Bay sits near the southern edge of the image. At high resolution gray pixels, which indicate human-created roads and buildings, can be seen ringing the southern Bay. The city of San Francisco straddles the land between the Bay and the Pacific Ocean while San Jose is located southeast of the southern tip of San Francisco Bay. Moving inland the green Coastal Mountains gives way to tans and lighter green of the Sacramento Valley while the Cascade Mountains are hidden under a bank of white cloud.

The Cascade Mountains of California continue northward into Oregon, where they are capped with snow. Klamath Lake sits near the top center of the image, appearing slightly more gray that the surrounding snow.