Weather

Back in 2006, we showed you a tool from Jeremy Cothran at the University of South Carolina that provided a ton of near real-time weather data from various sensors around the southeastern United States.
Jeremy has now taken that vast amount of data, and simplified it to highlight significant events among those sensors. In particular, it highlights wind gusts over 30 mph or wave heights over five feet. The result, when combined with other tools such as Google’s built-in satellite overlay, can be quite useful.

The more significant events are shown using larger icons, making it easier to see where the heart of the action is. You can view it yourself by loading this KMZ file into Google Earth. You can also view the data using Google Maps, but it loses the label styling and time slider functionality.
In both cases, the data shown is from the past 24 hours, and is updated hourly with new information. Nice work, Jeremy!

A few days ago we shared some tools to help you track Hurricane Irene in Google Earth. With the storm now bearing down on the east coast of the United States, we thought we’ve show you a few more ways to track its progress.
GEB Weather Tools
A great place to start is with our collection of Weather tools. While there are a lot of useful tools to be found in there, of particular interest is the hurricane tracking predictions you can find if you follow the following steps inside of the KMZ file:

• Large Collection of Atlantic Weather Overlays
  • Tropical Atlantic Overlays
    • Hurricane Model Data
      • North Atlantic Basin
        • Hurricane Irene

Live Hurricane Hunter Data
A few years ago, we showed you the hurricane hunter recon data which is collected and produced by the folks at Tropical Atlantic. Their KMZ file is updated in near real-time during missions, and you can view historical data as well. Shown below is a run they did yesterday, showing wind speeds from various areas of the hurricane. You can click any of the colored barbs to view detailed statistics for that location at that time. The amount of data available through their system is quite staggering.

Google Earth’s Built-in Tools
Finally, as we mentioned earlier this week, you can always use the tools built-in to Google Earth. The data isn’t as detailed as some of the other sources, but it’s easier to access to get a quick look at things. Under the “weather” layer you’ll find satellite and radar imagery, and enabling the “places” layer will reveal an icon on top of the hurricane which can be clicked for more information.

As always, please let us know if you’re aware of any other great Google Earth-based tools for tracking Hurricanes, and we’ll be sure to pass along the information to our readers.

Google just added some great weather features to Google Maps, which you can read about on the Google Lat Long Blog. There are some cool features in there, and I’ll probably use it from time to time.
However, if you really want to dig into the weather, Google Earth is still your best bet. Not only does it include the features now found in Google Maps, but you have great features like cloud/radar animations, “sun” mode to show real-time global light and the combination of a few of those to make Earth look amazingly realistic from space.

A few months ago, we posted a detailed entry highlighting all of the great weather tools in Google Earth. Be sure to grab the weather tools KMZ file to be able to see everything in one place.