Aerial Pictures of the Gulf Coast & Mississippi River Flooding

This past week I had to fly to Pensacola, Florida for work related reasons and on the flight back to Dallas I was able to get me a window seat that provided some good views outside during the flight.  Here is the first picture I took after liftoff that shows where a large stretch of trees meets the Gulf of Mexico:

Here is a view as the airplane turns and flies right over Pensacola:

Pensacola is actually a pretty nice town but because I was wrapped up in meetings every day I was there I didn’t really get chance to check it out.  As the plane gained in altitude I began to get some better views of the Gulf of Mexico:

During my visit I asked the people I was meeting up with if there beaches saw a lot of oil from last year’s BP Oil Spill?  They told that their beaches had seen some oil after the spill but today they it has all been cleaned up and no one is really worrying about any more.

Pensacola has a barrier island that looks like a long white strip from the air that is home to the crystal white sand that make this area’s beaches quite famous:

Something I found interesting though flying over Pensacola was the greenish color that glowed along this shoreline:

From the air it looked beautifully strange.  I don’t know if this mud or some kind seaweed growth near this strip of land?  As we gained in altitude we ended up flying right by the airport from where we took off:

As we started to turn west towards Dallas we flew right over this large bridge:

Here is another pictures as we continue to fly over Pensacola and heading west to Dallas:

Once outside of Pensacola the terrain below featured a lot of wilderness areas and meandering streams that I bet are great for fishing:

As we headed west I think this is Mobile, Alabama that we flew over:

As the flight continued west the weather became a bit more unstable and clouds began to make taking pictures a little bit more difficult.  However, the clouds did clear enough when we crossed the Mississippi River in order to allow me to take the following pictures:

You can click the image for a larger view, but I was clearly able to see that an enormous area of land had been flooded by the river.  Fortunately from my aerial vantage point I was able to see that the flooding at least where I was flying was limited mostly to thickly forested woodlands and farm land:

In fact the few small cities I saw near the flooding had not been touched yet though there was a few rural homes that I could see had been flooded by the rising waters unfortunately:

As we passed the Mississippi River the clouds came back and once again made picture taking difficult again:

Since this portion of the flight is mostly nothing, but farm land all the way to Dallas, I didn’t mind much.  The closer we got to Dallas the more unstable the weather became.  For whatever reason it seems like whenever I fly through Dallas I get hit with poor weather.  The clouds did part a little bit one time as we approached Dallas for me to take this picture of a large lake:

If anyone knows the name of this lake please leave a comment.  Anyway after taking this picture it was back into the clouds all the way to Dallas.  All in all it was an interesting flight to be able to see the large scale flooding caused by the Mississippi River, I am just glad that it appears from what I could see from the air to be impacting a minimal amount of people.  Hopefully it stays that way as the Army Corps of Engineers continues to work to manage these flood waters.