Google Earth Blog

The amazing things about Google Earth


Weather

High-res imagery of the Mississippi River flooding

GeoEye has just released some brand new high-res imagery of the flooding that is happening near Cairo, Illinois, due to the rising Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

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You can view it yourself using this KML file, or read more on the GeoEye blog.
Based on text in the KML file, the image was captured two days ago, on May 8. That’s quick work to get it published so quickly! Fortunately for residents of the area, the river appears to have crested and should begin receding in the next 24 hours or so. Let’s hope it does.

Google releases imagery from the recent tornadoes

As Google often does after a major disaster, they’ve reacted quickly and have already posted some imagery (via GeoEye) of areas in Alabama that were hardest hit by the tornadoes a few days ago.

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You can view the imagery a variety of different ways:
• Albums: View a before-and-after comparison of various areas inside of this Picasa album.
• Maps: This collection on Google Maps has quite a bit of information, including the new imagery.
• Earth: View the imagery directly in Google Earth using either the Tuscaloosa KML or the Jefferson County KML. Other KML files can be found on the Maps collection page.
As with Google, our hearts go out to those affected by this disaster.

Tracking tornadoes in Google Earth

With storms again ripping through the country, many of us are on the lookout for tornadoes. While it can’t help you prepare for one, Tornado Paths, created by Perry Samson at the University of Michigan, is a great way to view the locations and paths of past storms.
By default it shows all of the tornadoes that have hit the United States in the past 48 hours, but it has a few other nifty features.
• View “Today in History“, which shows all of the tornadoes that have struck on today’s date in the past 61 years.
• Use the search box to let you see all of the tornadoes that have struck a particular zip code since 1950. Very interesting stuff! For example, I now know that a 1986 tornado came within a few hundred meters of our current house.

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Of course, it makes excellent use of Google Earth too. By clicking the “View in Google Earth“ link from the home page, you can view the most recent tornadoes in Google Earth.
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As you can see, the tornadoes have a nice 3D semi-transparent affect, and some cows flying around nearby in an apparent homage to the classic movie “Twister”.
Have you had any close calls with a tornado recently? We’ve had some brutal storms lately, but fortunately no tornadoes too close to home.

Paved highways of clouds

The NASA Earth Observatory “Image of the Day” often posts some amazing images, such as some great images from the Gulf oil spill last April.
I love the way that NASA describes today’s image, shown below, as a “paved highways of clouds”. It’s a striking image, taken on January 24, that shows incredible clouds off the coast of the northeastern United States, while the clear skies above land uncover the freshly fallen snow.

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Like many of their images, they provide a few different ways to view it. You can view it directly on their site, download a 6MB jpg or download a 97MB GeoTiff.
Of course, the best way to view great images like this is with Google Earth! I compressed their jpg down to slightly a more reasonable size and put it in this KML file for you to use in Google Earth.
NASA often releases great images for us to enjoy, and this is another fine example.

Imagery from the landslides in Brazil

Back in mid-January, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina and other areas of Brazil expereinced devastating mudslides as the result of nearly 10 inches of rain in a single day. The landslides are reported to have killed nearly 1000 people, and have left at least 8,700 homeless. Since then, NASA has been attempting to capture fresh imagery of the area but has been unable to due to satellite imagery’s biggest nemesis — clouds.
The situation is similar to the flooding in Pakistan last year; Google wanted to provide imagery of the area to assist those that were trying to help, but they were unable to get any for quite a while due to persistent cloud cover.
Fortunately, clouds broke a few days ago and NASA’s EO-1 satellite was able to capture some remarkable images of the area.

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They’ve also provided a KML file with imagery of the mudslides, for those that wish to view the imagery inside of Google Earth.
UPDATE: After we published this post, DigitalGlobe sent us a great PDF they put together showing before/after shots of some of the affected areas. Download the PDF here.