Wind Map of US Will Blow You Away

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Talk about visualizations. Ever wondered what the wind would look like if you could see it in action from above? A new project posted online by a pair of Google computer scientists, called simply Wind Map, has to be seen to be believed. "It can be quite hypnotizing to watch the gusty trails blast across the American continent, skitter over the Sierras, get roughed up by the Rockies, and whoosh over the great plains on its way to Canada," writes Chris Taylor. Wind Map is the brainchild of Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, the co-leaders of Google's 'Big Picture' visualization research group in Cambridge, Mass. Wind patterns are constantly changing, of course, which is why the Wind Map designers have also given us a moving-image gallery of previous blustery days."

Just as I though

[ch-chuck]

Big suction holes west of Dallas and Philadelphia.

Re:

[Cryacin]

That and the windy city blows.

Proof positive

[chill]

Canada sucks. Heh. I always wondered what that little nub of Minnesota sticking into Canada was caused by.

Re:

[digitig]

I think it's fascinating that all along the Minnesota-Ontario border there's a southerly wind at the moment, but at the eastern end it's blown down from Quebec, looped around Chicago and is on it's way back up; in the middle it's come up from Texas, and to the west it's come in from Montana. That must make for some marked shifts of weather within just a few miles, and yet locally the wind would seem to be coming from the same place.

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[Ihmhi]

Do note the warm front emanating from Washington, D.C.

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[akboss]

Do note the warm front emanating from Washington, D.C.

Warm front?? Currently the maps shows this HUGE sucking in from Columbus south. All being pulled into DC at the moment. As is normal when Congress is in session.

California

[m0s3m8n]

I always knew California blew.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Then click the second link which goes right to the map. -_-

Next step: Google Maps

[slasho81]

I'd love to see a Wind overlay on Google Maps all over the world. Would be great for sailing. That's why we need open data.

Re:Next step: Google Maps

[Hadlock]

Wind maps + 7 day forecasts of the world's oceans are widely avalible. When you're sailing you're looking at the big picture of what's causing the wind and where it's headed, so a fine detail tool like Google Maps is sort of a moot point. Wind maps only really make sense on a scale of 1000 miles or more.
 
  7 day wind forecast of the South Atlantic [stormsurfing.com]

Re:

[rHBa]

Not at all, if you're a glider pilot wind maps of 5-10km can be really useful. That's why we have blipmaps [drjack.info].

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[LoztInSpace]

As a pilot you may already know of this: http://www.xcskies.com/ [xcskies.com] It's a forecast rather than observation.

Re:

[Hadlock]

You'd be shocked to hear my actual regatta resume. Generally a basic wind forecast is all we need to pick our sails (light, heavy) because local wind is so specific to the area, and most lakes are smaller than the data you can get. When wind is light, I've regularly seen the wind clock 180 degrees, then back again on a particular lake here in Dallas. Generally you're looking for fronts that will blow through, and if the front is going to come through during your regatta. Again, this requires looking at 1000

Re:Next step: Google Maps

[Mindcontrolled]

Have a look at Windfinder [windfinder.com]. Quite useful for planning your trips.

Alergies

[lahvak]

Forget sailing. It looks like it could be a great tool for figuring out movement of allergens such as pollen through the air, for studying allergy outbreaks.

Re:

[CBravo]

There is open data, I download it every day. Rasp operators use it for soaring forecasts: http://www.drjack.info/RASP/index.html [drjack.info]. Rasp is a pot of glue: It downloads data, data is processed by WRF and visualized by NCL.

The slight problem is that I need a fast dedicated core i7 machine for it (work in CUDA is in progress). It takes about an hour to do a forecast.

Last problem: there is NO good installation and configuration method (all knowledge is shared though via a forum / wiki). You get there in t

Freakin' awesome!

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

This is incredible technology. Wouldn't you love to have some checkboxes to turn on/off: state borders, topography, jet stream, hi/lo pressure systems, time display...

Re:Freakin' awesome!

[MrKaos]

This is incredible technology. Wouldn't you love to have some checkboxes to turn on/off: state borders, topography, jet stream, hi/lo pressure systems, time display...

Mountain ranges might be an interesting one, perhaps different wind layers as well

Google Earth

[MDMurphy]

I was thinking I'd love to see it as a layer in Google Earth, being able to see the wind flowing over and around the topography would be very interesting. I see a few null areas with little wind showing so I plan to check them out in GE to see if some local hills or mountains that I don't remember are creating them.

Re:

[Jarik C-Bol]

I checked the one weird calm spot in Idaho southeast of Boise. It is a low area surrounded by hills, with a lot of irrigated fields. Now i'm trying to figure out how that causes a still spot in the wind. Something to do with extra humidity from the irrigation making the air in the low area denser and causing a bubble perhaps?

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[rHBa]

Depends on the albedo value of the farm land, freshly ploughed fields are usually great for thermal development though. The darker the surface the more heat it absorbs.

However, damp soil releases its heat much more slowly and won't be so good for strong thermals although they might last a little longer into the evening.

Re:Freakin' awesome!

[buchner.johannes]

That's why people have focussed on making very fast Javascript engines over the last couple of years -- to enable stuff like this.

Re:

[ScytheBlade1]

I'd also like to see large bodies of water. Right next to Salt Lake City is... the Great Salt Lake, and right there is a massive area where the wind just dies. It makes sense (moisture rising, disrupting the existing airflow), but seeing that defined would be awesome.

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[CBravo]

maybe not exactly what your are looking for (e.g. a limited area): http://map.weatherme.eu/ [weatherme.eu] What do you think?

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[Threni]

> Wouldn't you love to have some checkboxes to turn on/off: state borders, topography, jet stream, hi/lo pressure
> systems, time display... ...Zoom out...stop scrolling to the mouse pointer when no buttons zoom in.

Why doesn't this work like google maps?

...animation speed scaled to map size/zoom?

[swb]

I'd also like to see the animation speed scaled or scalable to match the map scale/zoom level.

It sure looks cool, but the animation speed is misleading relative to the actual wind speed.

Almost awesome

[subreality]

Very cool. If someone mashes it up with a topo map it'll be awesome.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Mindcontrolled]

Yeah, stupid. It just averages out to a predictable level over the whole grid, effects minimal pollution and, well, just works. Greetings from Europe - with apologies to all decent people in the US, we kinda find it amusing to see you sliding back into your personal version of the dark ages.

Re:

[beaviz]

Ah, another "superior" European. Meanwhile, in the real world, the US ranks #1 in wind power generation, #1 in biomass generation, and #2 in solar generation in the world.

Per what?

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[ColdWetDog]

Ah, another "superior" European. Meanwhile, in the real world, the US ranks #1 in wind power generation, #1 in biomass generation, and #2 in solar generation in the world.

Per what?

Per Library of Congress, what else?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse my neighbor, he's been brainwashed into thinking dedication and loyalty to the U.S. is a really really good thing. Logic eludes him.

Re:

[NeutronCowboy]

Actually, even your useless metric of comparing a country the size of the US to much smaller European states is wrong. Germany beats the pants off of the US in solar generation as does Italy, wind power per square mile or per capita is pityful compared to the rest of the world, and biomass statistics include wood burning, which can be a very bad idea.

Conservatives: where facts are created from the gut.

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[Mindcontrolled]

The relevant metrics here are based in the fact that my hometown with over a million inhabitants will be off fossil fuels by 2025. The conversion is going as planned and I have yet to see the blackouts the conservatard FUD-mongers are predicting. Salutations from the 3rd millenium, friend! ;)

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[NeutronCowboy]

Because, dear AC, bandwidth is measured at the house, not in total capacity. Therefore, the bandwidth per square mile is a completely useless statistic. And even then, the US fails.

At least compare the US to the EU, which has a comparable size and population. But since that doesn't work in your favor, you ignore it. You do realize that reality doesn't care about your mental gymnastics, right?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[shutdown -p now]

In every broadband article, "superior Europeans" (and non-brainwashed Americans) suggest taking a particular metropolitan area of US that is similar in size and population density to some European country - say, Los Angeles or New York - and comparing that. And such comparisons always result in US still lagging behind.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[echusarcana]

This is Europe where countries like Germany are shutting down your carbon free nuclear and letting your less fluent neighbors burn coal on your behalf? Hypocrites.

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[phantomfive]

Greetings from Europe - with apologies to all decent people in the US, we kinda find it amusing to see you sliding back into your personal version of the dark ages.

You mean, like in Germany where they are saying goodbye to nuclear [consumerenergyreport.com] and cutting solar power subsidies? [renewablesbiz.com]

Re:Yeah, but...

[Mindcontrolled]

Yeah, cutting solar subsidies, because it is becoming self-sustaining by now and cutting nuclear because it was never sustainable without unloading a shitload of externalities on everyone. We did not like that, and, unlike some other western nations, we have a functioning democracy.

Re:

[phantomfive]

So now instead of nuclear, Germany's switched to coal and buying electricity from France, and you've got a promise to switch to renewable long after the politicians who made that promise will be out of office. Sounds like a real functioning democracy to me.

Keep throwing those insults, though.

Re:

[Jarik C-Bol]

As someone who lives in the US near some of the HUGE wind farms that have been installed over the past 10 years, i have to point out that the reason we don't use more wind is because we are STILL not ready for it. These massive wind farms are situated in ideal locations, and yet, they sit there, standing still. Why? because the grid is just not capable of handling the load that these huge farms produce. We can make loads of electricity, we just have not built up the infrastructure to get that electricity t

Re:

[Mindcontrolled]

Yes, I am aware of that problem. I was a bit snarky up there, I do wonder, though, why no one can get his shit together to invest in infrastructure anymore.

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[Jarik C-Bol]

i suppose because despite its national scope, literally hundreds of companies all have to get their shit together, at approximately the same time, all with enough budget to upgrade/replace *their* portion of the grid. And we all know how good humans are at working together when money is involved.

Hurricanes

[sehryan]

Personally, I am looking forward to checking out this map during hurricane season. This map is the number one thing I am going back to when a hurricane strikes land here in the US.

Re:

[DriverDude]

I'll use it for hurricanes also. This visualization is AWESOME. Excellent work. Thanks for the link - I'll be passing it around.

What are they eating?

[Eudial]

What are they eating in San Jose to produce all that wind?! Seriously. Something is seriously wrong. Seek medical attention.

Re:

[eugene ts wong]

That's what you thought of when you looked at the map??

When I looked at it, I thought, "Eastern US looks like a hairy chest...Western US looks like a long haired woman.".

Training and Visualization

[AtomicSnarl]

As a retired weather guy with over 25 years working with and training weathermen, this is one of the best tools I've seen. Applause!

Understanding fluid flow and visualizing it is not easy, but it crucial to meteorology because that dynamic drives and reveals the mechanisms that create the weather systems we track, such as fronts, storms, and so on. Given the tools seen are usually something like this (from ADDS) [aviationweather.gov] or this (from CoolWx) [coolwx.com], the WindMap does a much more intuitive job of showing the strength and patterns in merging flow.

So, well done! The only improvement I can think of for better use operationally would be an hourly looper of, say, the past six hours with a 3-4 second pause for each hour. This would let you track specific features as the day goes on.

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[siride]

The Unisys site has had a wind streamlines map for ages: http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_con.php?image=st&inv=0&t=cur&expanddiv=hide_bar [unisys.com]

vortex.plymouth.edu lets you make maps with streamlines as well.

Granted, none of these are animated, but the point is that streamlines are hardly new in the online weather visualization field.

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[SumterLiving]

Yep, and 30,000 years ago there were people telling stories by drawing on cave walls. Today those cave wall drawing are animated to such a point that people pay $10 to watch them. My point is graphic novels and movies have been around for a long time so why get excited?

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[fhage]

Intuitive feel is not really worth much. The ADDS plot shows wind direction, speed to the nearest 2.5kts, gust speeds, pressure, temperature, and local flight rules. Quantitative things a pilot needs to know. Watch the nice animation, but learn to read the plot symbols.

[rant]As one of the originators of the ADDS web site, and someone with 25+ years writing scientific data visualisation software, I can report that most meteorologists and forecasters are disinterested in this type of presentation. I produ

Re:

[CBravo]

Not that they are the first to figure this out: http://ccom.unh.edu/vislab/projects/2d_flow_vis.html [unh.edu]

Google Tax?

[popo]

Oh... I thought the East-coast was a visualization of tax-dollars.

Re:

[bobbutts]

This seems to visualize surface winds. Radar (precipitation aloft) is moved by winds higher in the atmosphere. There's often a disconnect in the direction of surface and elevated winds. Check out a Skew-T Sounding and you can see the larger vertical wind profile.

Re:

[digitig]

I am looking at my anemometer. It is 30 feet off the ground - that's surface wind.

Sure would like to know why my comment was modded to zero. Windmap fanbois?

Are you here looking at my instruments? No. You aren't.

The map is wrong.

You posted as anonymous coward, which always starts out with a moderation of 0. No, we're not looking at your instruments. Are you looking at the same windmap?

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[element-o.p.]

At 30 feet off the ground, your anemometer is measuring a very localized wind direction, which, depending upon terrain, vegetation, etc., can be very different from your neighbor's wind direction 100 yards away. I have stood in my yard during wind storms and watched the trees on either side of my house blowing in different directions, due to wind being funneled in ravines near my house.

They didn't say in the wind map page (of if they did, I didn't see it), but I suspect they are taking an average wind s

Re:

[digitig]

At the moment it's showing an easterly wind over Boston, not a westerly. You do know that wind directions are named for the direction the wind is coming from, not the direction it's going to, don't you?

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[digitig]

Looking at a weather page for Boston [wunderground.com] it agrees with the windmap. Are you sure you know which way a westerly wind blows?

Have a look at their other projects (NSFW)

[nbritton]

If you think that's interesting, check out their other project http://hint.fm/projects/touch/ [hint.fm] (description) and http://www.fleshmap.com/touch/index.html [fleshmap.com] (direct link) on their site as well. Please note both links are NSFW.

Slashdotters are like lab mice that always seek out cocaine, but instead of cocaine, they're focused on little fluffy clouds.

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[ColdWetDog]

Man, that's obvious. Guys like to get touched in one place. Hint: Foot massages are out.

Re:

[sayfawa]

If you haven't seen it already, you might be interested in this:
Interactive Starry Night [vimeo.com]

Jet Stream and other altitudes?

[nefus]

Looks cool but what altitude is this? Do they have a map for different altitudes? What layer has the jet stream?

Re:

[element-o.p.]

It's a little hard to find, but they mention it is surface level winds on the map.

Next: Winds at higher altitudes

[RNLockwood]

I assume that the winds are "surface" winds. It would be interesting to see the wind field at higher altitudes, too. AFAIK a surface low pressure area will have winds blowing into it and above it will be a high altitude high pressure with winds blowing out of it. At least that's how it's been explained to me.

Title humor...

[nitehawk214]

The joke in the title blows.

Pun alert

[Apothem]

This wind map really swept up my interest. It's really cool to see wind wind up on a map like this. I wonder if this will end up getting jet streamed over to an app of some kind? It would be quite the windward sight.

Linux beard?

[Tablizer]

This is what it looks like when you don't trim your beard.

Eastern Oregon here I come!

[F34nor]

What I want is to get a law passed that you can put your solar panels up anywhere in state and get paid back in terms of tax credits and local rates as if they were on your house. The idea of putting panels up west of the Cascades seems insane to me. There are transmission lines that pass through the SE of Oregon, the highest solar index and now I see the highest wind speed.

But it is all bullshit compared to the jet stream. Check out http://www.skywindpower.com/ww/index.htm [skywindpower.com] The only problem with it is that

Bluzugh

[Cazekiel]

I caught this the other night after taking my Ambien. Ohhh...

Do you know why Kansas is so windy?

[iamzack]

Because Oklahoma sucks and Nebraska blows. NyuckNyuckNyuckNyuckNyuck

Proof that Chicago sucks...

[ColdBoot]

what more needs to be said?

Re:

[slider2800]

Ahem... Firefox 11.0 here and it works like a charm, thankyouverymuch.

Re:

[schwit1]

Firefox 12b3 here, no problems.

Re:

[maxwell demon]

Wait, you're saying that a Google-made page works best in a Google-made browser?

Will the days of IE-only web pages return, only with IE replaced by Chrome?