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On November 4th 2021, while the 78 mobile gates of the MoSE, the system for the defense of Venice and the lagoon islands from storm surges, were about to retract in their housing on the bottom of the inlets, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite captured an outstanding image of the upper Adriatic Sea during one of the first events of the season. Such a situation is not easily observable from satellites because barriers normally close during storms, when cloud cover can prevent the view of the area and the barriers do not necessarily close at the time of satellite overpass. Besides these details, that are shown in the post of the NASA magazine Earth Observatory (Venice Holds Back the Adriatic Sea (nasa.gov)), the outstanding images of the Sentinel-2 satellite show the upper Adriatic Sea under intense southeasterly wind (Scirocco). The peculiar patterns of suspended sediments that are observable along the coast and on the lagoon tidal flats are the subject of the research project Venezia2021 (http://venezia2021.corila.it/home/).

The scene acquired by the Landsat-8 image of November 6th 2021 shows instead a typical situation of northeasterly wind (Bora) that mobilize and transport sand and finer sediments on a narrow belt along the shore and in the central lagoon. Also visible in the in the tidal inlets are the four closed flood barriers for the occurrence of further high-water events.