Unbelievable! NASA shares photos of power outage in Odisha aftermath of Cyclone Fani

Bhubaneswar: Severe cyclonic storm Fani or the 'Hood of Snake' tore through the state of Odisha in eastern India, becoming of the worst storms to hit the country since 1999. The US space agency, NASA, shared the images showing where the lights went out across some of the worst affected areas in Odisha.

The images on the page also show data visualizations of where the lights went out in Cuttack and capital city Bhubaneswar, the two largest cities of Odisha.

These images were made from data acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite. VIIRS has a "day-night band" that detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared, including reflected moonlight, light from fires and oil wells, lightning, and emissions from cities or other human activity.

The extremely severe cyclonic storm FANI made landfall at Puri on May 3. The cyclone brought winds of more than 200 kmph and left its destructive trail in Puri, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, and Khurda. Fani also damaged or destroyed energy infrastructure and many buildings, leaving around 3.5 million households without electric power for days after the storm hit.

The storm destroyed several transmission towers and uprooted as many as 156,000 utility poles.