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Google Earth Imagery Updates: Floods

Google has recently updated the ‘historical imagery’ layer and today we are having a look at a couple of floods.

Black River, Arkansas.
We had a look at this flooding event last month using low resolution Sentinel-2 imagery. Now there is higher resolution DigitalGlobe imagery we can see a lot more detail. The imagery was captured on May 6th, 2017.

The road below appears to have also served as a levee to prevent flooding. However, it has clearly been breached in a number of places, causing major flooding downstream.

Multiple breaches in a levee, Black River, Arkansas (near Pocahontas).


Flooded houses downstream from the breached levee.

before
after

Pocahontas, Arkansas, showing how the height of the river during the flood compares to the normal level.

Rigaud, Quebec, Canada.
According to this article, between April 5 and May 16, more than 5,700 homes were flooded and more than 4,000 people forced from their homes in Quebec, Canada. One of the worst affected towns was Rigaud. There are some DigitalGlobe images from May 17 after the water started to subside, but we can still see some flooded areas.


Flooded houses in Rigaud, Quebec, Canada.


Retreating flood waters, Rigaud, Quebec, Canada.

For outlines of the above imagery and locations of interest, download this KML file.

US flags for the 4th of July

Tomorrow, the 4th of July, is Independence Day in the United States. So, we thought we would try and find some examples of large US flags visible in Google Earth. It turned out to be remarkably difficult, given that Americans love their flag and display it as often as possible.

The best examples of flags designed for viewing from above are on commercial buildings:


Legendary Marine, Destin, Florida.


Lamons Gasket Company, Houston, Texas.

Laredo National Bank in Laredo, Texas is said to have the tallest flag pole in the US at 308 feet and flying a 100 x 50 foot flag. Unfortunately, the flag itself can only be seen in older imagery, which isn’t very good resolution.


Laredo National Bank, Laredo, Texas.

The largest flag ever made is The Superflag at 255 x 505 feet. It was created by Thomas “Ski” Demski in 1992. He passed away in 2002 but you can still rent The Superflag and smaller versions from the company he created. We were unable to find the flag in Google Earth imagery, but did find his home named ‘the Pole’ where he originally flew it.


‘The Pole’, Long Beach, California. We believe the three dots of colour on the neighbors roofs are imagery artifacts.

For the above locations, some other flags and locations of famous or record-setting flags, patriotic messages and more, download this KML file.

The best of Google Earth for June 2017

In June, Malta became the latest country to receive Street View. South Korea also got a significant increase in Street View coverage.

There was an imagery update in early June and we had a look at a number of new sights:
Mudslide in Argentina and Oroville Dam in California.
The Bidi Bidi refugee settlement in Uganda.
Floods in the Dominican Republic, Malaysia, and San Jose, California and a factory fire in the Philippines.

Google has not updated the ‘historical imagery’ layer recently so there are probably many other sights that didn’t make it into the default layer that we will only get to see on the next update to ‘historical imagery’.

Google has continued to ensure that the Voyager tours in the new browser based Google Earth remain fresh by adding a number of educational tours, a tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Harry Potter books, and a Beatle Mania tour in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ eighth album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

We had a look at a collapsed bridge in Atlanta, Georgia and discussed the fact that Google Earth and Street View are becoming very useful tools for investigating such events.

We had a look at floating solar plants around the world. They still make up only a tiny proportion of solar generation, but the number is growing fast and we expect it to be a popular option in countries where land is at a premium.

We had a look at ‘fairy circles’ in South Africa. They cover a vast area across the Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces. We believe they are created by termite or ant colonies.

When Google Earth doesn’t have imagery of large scale events, we look to other sources. We used Sentinel-2 imagery to explore a landslide and tsunami in Greenland, and flooding along the Black River, Arkansas. We used imagery from imaging company Planet to look at a landslide in California

We created a basic tool for two way conversion between KML and Microsoft Excel.

The Environmental Defence Fund (EDF) website released the results of pollution measurements being made by Google’s Street View fleet.

New Google Earth Explorer Tours

The new browser based Google Earth continues to receive new content in the form of Voyager Tours. One recent addition is in honour of the 20th anniversary of the Harry Potter book series and features a number of notable places relating to various Harry Potter films.


Platform 9 3/4 of Harry Potter fame.

Ten other Voyager tours were recently introduced in collaboration with National Geographic Society, PBS Education, HHMI Biointeractive and Mission Blue and focus on educational uses for Google Earth. One big benefit of putting Google Earth in the browser is that it is now available on Chrome Books, a special type of laptop that only runs the Chrome browser and no other native applications. They are popular in education and the absence of Google Earth on that platform was sorely missed by many.

In addition to the tours, National Geographic has put together some ideas for educators using Google Earth as a teaching tool.

We hope Google continues to encourage new content in the Voyager collection. We would actually like to see much more detailed and comprehensive content. For example, we would love to see the Explorers: Age of Encounter tour expanded to include other explorers from different dates and continents and to go into more depth for each one. We also found that it had not been thoroughly tested and at the time of writing, clicking on the PBS logo led to a broken link.

Note that the new Google Earth only runs in Google Chrome or as an app on Android.

The Millennium Falcon in Google Earth

We recently came across an article about an interesting find in Google Earth imagery. At Longcross Studios in Surrey, England, the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars fame can be seen. It is hidden behind barriers but they omitted to cover the top.


Millennium Falcon, at Longcross Studios in Surrey, England.

The Millennium Falcon above was used in the filming of the latest Star Wars movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The filming took place in 2016 before the above image was captured, and at that time the Millennium Falcon was part of a much more elaborate set that can be seen here.

The original, used in earlier movies, was apparently built at Pembroke Dock in Wales then transported to Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire. A couple of other versions of the Millennium Falcon have been built for recent movies at Greenham Common, UK, for Episode VII and at Malin Head in County Donegal, Ireland for Roque One. Unfortunately neither has been caught in Google Earth imagery.

Back in 2013 we had a look at a KML file with a list of locations from the earlier Star Wars movies. For a comprehensive list of locations including the most recent movies see this Wikipedia page. Unfortunately it doesn’t provide an easy way to export the locations to Google Earth.