hurricanes – Page 2 – The Map Room

Looking Back at Hurricane Harvey’s Impact

Published on 28 September 201728 September 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Here’s a CBS News gallery of before-and-after images showing the impact of flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. The page is undated but was published on 1 September. [Dave Smith]

And, via CityLab, here are a set of maps from the Urban Institute that show the impact of Hurricane Harvey on Houston’s neighbourhoods, based on income levels, home ownership rates, accumulated-equity rates, all of which looking at the economic impact of the storm. “Harvey’s aftermath puts an enormous hurdle in front of all homeowners and renters but will be a particular setback for low-income, minority families recovering from the 2008 housing bust.”

Previously: Mapping Hurricane Harvey’s Impact.

Maria’s Deluge

Published on 25 September 201725 September 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Some of the most striking maps of the recent bout of hurricanes have involved the sheer amount of water dropped by these storms. (See previous posts on Harvey and Irma.) Above, a is a short NASA video showing Maria’s track through the Caribbean, dumping water in its wake.

Relatedly, the Washington Post produced maps of precipitation and river gauge levels on Puerto Rico that show just how much water Maria threw at that island.

Hurricane Irma’s Water Footprint

Published on 19 September 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Quite the dramatic animation from the USGS’s Office of Water Information: it shows not only Hurricane Irma’s path through Florida, but also the total accumulated rainfall and stream gauge height. As the path of the hurricane moves across the U.S. mainland, the map erupts in the blue that shows total rainfall.

Tracking Hurricane Irma

Published on 10 September 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

As they did with Hurricane Harvey, both the New York Times and the Washington Post graphics departments have frequently updated map pages showing the projected path and impact of Hurricane Irma. The Times’ page looks at the hurricane’s current and projected path, threat of coastal flooding, and areas under evacuation, plus some context; the Post maps Irma’s forecasted path on this page and the potential storm surge and evacuation zones on this page, while this page compares Irma’s size to past hurricanes.

Debunking a Fake Hurricane Map

Published on 8 September 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Also from last week: someone on Facebook circulated a map showing the path of Hurricane Irma hitting Houston, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a warning on Twitter about fake forecasts (real forecasts only go out five days). Media factchecking service PolitiFact has the details. Fun fact: making a counterfeit or false weather forecast is an offense in the United States.

Mapping Hurricane Harvey’s Impact

Published on 29 August 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

The Washington Post maps rainfall and flooding levels in the Houston area.

The New York Times is collecting several maps on two web pages. The first page deals with subjects like rainfall, river level, current and historical hurricane tracks, damage reports, and cities and counties under evacuation orders. Maps on the second page look at Harvey’s impact on the Houston area.

Esri’s U.S. Flooding Public Information Map includes precipitation and flood warnings.

#Harvey in perspective. So much rain has fallen, we've had to update the color charts on our graphics in order to effectively map it. pic.twitter.com/Su7x2K1uuz

— National Weather Service (@NWS) August 28, 2017

Kenneth Field critiques the National Weather Service’s decision to add more colours to their precipitation maps (see above). “Simply adding colours to the end of an already poor colour scheme and then making the class representing the largest magnitude the very lightest colour is weak symbology. But then, they’ve already used all the colours of the rainbow so they’re out of options!”

NASA Images of Hurricane Harvey

Published on 27 August 201727 August 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Hurricane Harvey on 26 Aug at 5:45 PM CDT (2245 UTC), as captured by NOAA’s GOES-East satellite. Credits: NASA/NOAA GOES Project.

NASA’s page on Hurricane Harvey has been updated many times, sometimes several times a day, since Harvey began its life as Tropical Depression 9 on 17 August. It includes plenty of satellite imagery of the storm, as well as temperature and rainfall maps.

Hurricane Matthew Map Roundup

Published on 6 October 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Start with the National Hurricane Center, which has lots of different maps of Hurricane Matthew’s predicted path, weather warnings, rainfall potential and so forth. See also maps from Weather Underground.

Google’s Crisis Map includes evacuation resources—Red Cross shelters, evacuation routes, traffic data—in addition to storm track and precipitation information.

Matthew has already struck southwest Haiti; the Humanitarian OSM Team has put out a call for crisis mappers on the following projects: buildings in Nippes; road network in Grand’Anse and Sud.

Wind maps from Windytv and EarthWindMap visualize the wind patterns of Matthew and, further out in the Atlantic, Nicole.

Hurricane imagery from NOAA’s GOES East satellite. NASA Earth Observatory has imagery of Matthew’s path toward Florida.

[Dave Smith/Maps Mania/NASA Earth/NOAA Satellites]

Mapping Hurricane Tracks

Published on 23 August 201222 October 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

IDV Solutions, source of that map of tornado tracks across the U.S., has released a map of the paths of all known hurricanes since 1851. An added twist is that this map uses a polar azimuthal equidistant projection centred on Antarctica, creating a point of view that is unexpected and that has already created a few double-takes. Via io9.