Google Earth Blog

The amazing things about Google Earth


sri lanka

Ongoing Sri Lanka flooding visible in Sentinel-2 imagery

Sri Lanka is currently experiencing severe flooding across its south-western region, reportedly killing at least 122 people so far. We had a look at Sentinel-2 imagery and were impressed to find some very recent imagery from May 28th, 2017, already available on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Below you can see the southern city of Matara surrounded by flood waters, as well as the muddy water streaming into the Indian Ocean.


Southern Sri Lanka as seen in Sentinel-2 imagery.


A close up of Matara.

To see the above Sentinel-2 image in Google Earth download this KML file.

Cylcone Roanu: Landslide and Floods

Cyclone Roanu was, according to Wikipedia, a relatively weak tropical cyclone that, nevertheless, caused severe flooding in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In addition, it caused a number of large landslides in Sri Lanka. The only imagery of the event so far in Google Earth is two patches of imagery of Sri Lanka: an image of the capital, Colombo, showing flooding and a set of images further inland showing a landslide.

The images were captured soon after the cyclone so they are rather cloudy and the light is poor.


Flooding in Colombo


Flooding in Colombo.


Much of the landslide is covered in cloud.

before
after

 
Before and after of the tail end of the landslide.

To find the locations shown above in Google Earth, download this KML file.

Sri Lanka gets Street View

Google has recently released Street View for the country of Sri Lanka. Read more about it on the Google LatLong blog.

As of this writing the blue outlines for the Sri Lankan Street View are not yet in Google Earth, but the outlines do show in Google Maps and Street View imagery is available in both products.

Sri Lanka is the world’s fourth largest producer of tea and much of the Street View shows vast tea plantations.


Mackwoods is a tea brand, and we believe that is tea growing on the hillsides. See it in Street View.


Most of the roads in Sri Lanka are very narrow. Although there are cars and buses, motorbikes and especially auto rickshaws seem to be a very popular form of transportation. See it in Street View


The locals seem pleased that they are finally getting Street View. See it in Street View.


A temple being repaired. See it in Street View.