D-Day satellite image shows the storm brave troops dodged

Thick cloud hung over France and the Channel on the morning of D-Day as one of the largest and most dangerous seaborne invasions in history got underway, newly built satellite images reveal.

Scientists have turned weather records from 1944 into an image that looks like a satellite photo. The picture recreates what the world might have looked like from space as 160,000 troops crossed the Channel and stormed the beaches of Normandy, a mission that could have failed had the weather not cleared in time.

Released ahead of the premiere of the D-Day film Pressure, the images were built using old weather readings fed into a modern weather record called a reanalysis, which fills in the gaps between real measurements to recreate a full picture of the sky.

Professor Ed Hawkins, University of Reading, co-created the images with forecasters from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting. Professor Hawkins said: "Troops set off into a sky that was still breaking up after days of storms into a narrow window of better weather. A day earlier, or a few hours either way, and the weather could have stopped the invasion in its tracks, and changed the outcome of the war.

"Images like this help us understand what troops, sailors and pilots actually faced that day, in a way written reports alone cannot. They show just how narrow the margin was between success and failure, and how much was riding on a small break in the cloud."

Cloud clearing

The satellite image created by the University of Reading and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts shows cloud stretching across Britain and much of the Channel on 6 June 1944. Patches of Southern England and northern France are only partly hidden, showing the sky was clearing but not yet clear.

This matches what is already known about the weather that morning. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the first weather report from the Normandy beaches on the morning of 6 June described mainly sunny conditions with a north-westerly wind, better than the day before, but still short of what military planners had originally wanted.

The extraordinary story of how Captain James Stagg urged General Eisenhower to delay the allied invasion of Normandy is now the subject of a major Hollywood film called Pressure, starring Andrew Scott as Stagg and Brendan Fraser as Eisenhower. The dangerous conditions facing soldiers meant the crossing and invasion was delayed from 5 June to 6 June 1944. 

Notes to editors: 

Pressure releases in UK cinemas on Wednesday, 9 September. 

Professor Ed Hawkins is available for interview. Contact the University of Reading Press Office on 0118 378 5757 or pressoffice@reading.ac.uk to arrange.  

Download satellite reconstructions via Google Drive: 
 

Image shows satellite images on D-Day, 6 June 1944, from midnight through to 3pm, starting from top left clockwise.