tornado

Google releases imagery for Yazoo tornado and more from Haiti

April 30, 2010

Google continues to support relief efforts across the country and across the world with fresh imagery. They’ve just released more imagery from Haiti, which can be accessed using the Historical Imagery tool.

In addition, they’ve released some very fresh imagery from the tornado that recently hit Yazoo City, Mississippi. It’s not yet available directly within Google Earth, but you can download this image overlay

Google Earth File. You must have GE installed.

to see it. I’d expect the imagery will arrive in the “Historical Imagery” area at some point in the future.

New Satellite Imagery of Town Destroyed by Tornado

May 9, 2007

DigitalGlobe has recently acquired a satellite photo of Greensburg, Kansas – the town which was destroyed by an F5 tornado last Friday night (see news reports).

DigitalGlobe is the main provider of satellite photos Google uses for Google Earth. Someone at Google has quickly processed the Greensburg photo for viewing with GE. In order to make the photo available right away, they have posted this KML file at the GE Community forum. Once loaded, you will see the image begin to load. Zoom in for more detail. The KML file includes both a before and after version of the imagery (since the base imagery is lower resolution). The “after” photo (taken on May 7th) shows just how devastating this tornado was…it’s awful! I see over 50 blocks which appear to be totally destroyed. Practically the entire town really was destroyed. Hopefully the photo will be of use to rescue workers. But, at this stage, it may be more important that this help accelerate aid to the citizens of this town who were obviously the victims of a terrible natural disaster.

Historical Maps of Tornado Paths in the US

April 3, 2007

Someone from the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences at the University of Michigan posted a Google Maps mashup which shows the paths of tornadoes from 1950-2004 (they have plans to do more). If you click on the tornado icon for one of the paths, you can click on the tab which says “Fly the Path” which lets you download the path for that tornado into Google Earth. This way you can get a close view in 3D of the path of the tornado.
It would be nice if they also let you download an entire month’s worth of tornado paths into GE. I’d like to see someone use this same technique for hurricane paths. The same interface could be used with just a different data set.