Enjoy Real Time Updates of Hurricane Sandy With this Online Wind Map
Earlier today, Google published an online Crisis Map for Hurricane Sandy. It reminded me of a data visualization masterpiece from Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg’s. I stumbled upon their site — Wind Map a few months back and was just blown away (excuse the pun….)
Their site takes real surface wind data from the National Digital Forecast Database and creates a real-time visualization of the data.
Although originally created as a personal art project by Fernanda and Martin (who currently lead Google’s “Big Picture” data visualization group in Cambridge, MA) I’ve found it a groovy way to visualize the progress of Hurricane Sandy across the east coast. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that the data is quite beautiful as well!
I played with it this afternoon few minutes and made a quick screencast for groovyPost TV to show how it works and a few of the features. Enjoy!
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Ziggy
October 29, 2012 at 5:53 pm
Hey folks, hope all goes well during this frightening ordeal. Thinking of you from Down Under..Keep safe!
Steve Krause
October 30, 2012 at 12:35 am
Down under you call these…. Cyclones?
Austin Krause
October 30, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Yup my power got hit last night. Still out, but I’m making due thanks to wonderful friends in the area who still have WiFi up.
Steve Krause
October 30, 2012 at 12:26 pm
Oh nice. Any flooding?
How high did the winds get?
Austin Krause
October 30, 2012 at 2:11 pm
No flooding for us, I’m located in at a fairly high elevation. Our neighbors got flooding in their basement of several inches and that created a mess for them. We were up until midnight, which ended in rigging an in-basement gutter system that drained water out through the basement door.
Wind speeds were up to 85 mph gusts, with sustained speeds at roughly 55 mph from 2pm to 1am. Rather than being uprooted, most trees were literally ripped in half and are still standing (although a lot shorter).
Power is still out and we have an UNKNOWN estimated time of restoration. Yeah… So far our power company claims to have restored 142,349 customers’ power since last night, leaving only 6,517 still in the dark, I guess we’re just last on the priority list.