This map from MLive shows roads closed due to flooding in Western Michigan. (Turn around, don't drown). Click through for the interactive version.
A similar map from NOAA shows flood gauge readings across the area.
The purple gauge in this above map is Grand Rapids at Comstock Park, which is showing flooding at almost 6 feet above flood stage.
The historical big flood in Grand Rapids is from 1904; this collection rephotographs scenes from that flood in 2004.
I was out for a walk along the Huron River, and Runtastic mapped it as though I was actually in the middle of the river.
There's actually a path in the "middle" of the river, a berm that separates the Argo Cascades city park from the Huron River per se. Microsoft and Nokia don't appear to know about that path, just illustrating some of the perils of computing walking directions in an urban environment.
The map below is a reduced size of the original, which is an oil and gas pipeline and field map of Algeria. It's hosted on the site mem-algeria.org and doesn't have any other credits on the map. (Not for use in navigation.)
MEM stands for Ministère de l’Energie et des Mines; this is an official map from that ministry of the Algerian government.
The incident of late - see Bloomberg News story of 18 January 2013 - focus on the complex at the Amenas Gas Field; a detail of this map is below, showing Amenas (labelled here as "In Amenas") near the border with Libya.
More details:
BP: "BP in Algeria" with maps of In Amenas, though not at this detail; full sized map (PDF)
Here's a heat wave map of Australia for January 14, 2013. Note that the system had to add an extra set of colors to represent the hottest temperatures. More current maps from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
I watched a cyclist go down Packard today in the middle of a snowstorm, so you get an idea of how intrepid you need to be to enjoy Ann Arbor's bicycle routes around town. Here's a map of where Bike Score thinks the city is most bikeable. It looks like they are missing the bicycle path along the river through Gallup Park.
Tonight's northern lights are visible in Yellowknife, Canada. Here's a snapshot from the AuroraMAX HD camera. (Tonight is Monday, November 12, 2012.)
The forecast for tonight from the University of Alaska suggests that the aurora may be visible as far south as Lansing, Michigan. From my Pinterest maps board:
Source: gi.alaska.edu via Edward Vielmetti on Pinterest
Some evidence of sightings:
The Twitter account @Aurora_Alerts is active when the Northern Lights are active, and it gives very short term forecasts of activity. The higher the Kp number, the brighter the aurora.
The Twitter account @AuroraMAX belongs to the night sky camera that took the snapshot above. It is run by the Canadian Space Agency, and their (English language) homepage has more information about their setup.
My Pinterest feed is all maps, all the time. It's like I discovered rec.arts.maps and jumped right in.
I don't try to make Pinterest a simple copy of anything else that I do online, in part because there's really nothing similar to it to copy. It's ridiculously easy to make a copy of an image and attach a few words to it, and there's not any real problem with posting too much stuff to it because when you're on topic it all just flows down the page nicely.
I've started to collect a few people on Pinterest who share my love of maps, and it's nice to see their map-collecting work in my feed there. What I miss, though, is bringing that love of maps back here - there's certainly a story behind most of those maps, and perhaps one in ten deserves a longer essay to go with it and some spot in my own permanent blog collection.
The biggest weird thing about Pinterest is how readily people make copies of copyrighted materials. It's like the rules are different there - fair use, perhaps? - and within the system no one seems to care very much if an image is copyrighted or creative commons or public domain. I'm sure that speeds up the user interface a lot, but it makes me think twice before just yanking anything from within Pinterest and placing it somewhere else without doing some research.
Here's one of the many maps that I have found that I wouldn't have collected any other way - I've done the Pinterest "embed" here, just to simplify what would otherwise be a multi-step upload and include process. The only complaint with the map is that "Wal-Mart Fans" should probably be "Trader Joes Fans".
Source: typicalmichiganders.tumblr.com via Edward on Pinterest
The Long Island Power Authority has not one but three maps showing power outages and restorations. I'm not sure which is most informative. Each of these are from the evening of Saturday, November 3, 2012. Please click through to the page linked for current updates.
Some news that goes along with this:
Newsday, Tuesday November 6: "Cuomo blasts delays in power restoration as 'unacceptable'"
Criticism of LIPA's outage map prompted the utility to produce a new format.
It came under intense heat and skepticism Monday after ratepayers noticed outages in their area were reported to be considerably smaller than they knew to be the case.
Hervey said LIPA sharply cut back the touted capability of the map to remove most interactivity, including restoration times in specific neighborhoods, and other details of outages, because the features weren't working.
Newsday, Monday Novmeber 5: "New storm, LIPA outages, gas lines frustrate LIers"
As he did last week, Cuomo expressed anger at utilities.
"The progress is unacceptable," he said. "I think that the utility companies have not performed adequately. The utilities are paid to provide service. They should have been prepared."
Newsday, Monday November 5: "Cuomo: Power restoration progress unacceptable"
LIPA chief operating officer Michael Hervey on Sunday acknowledged a large backlog in uploading current information to the outage system. Crews are focused on work, he said, but LIPA is working harder to get the information current and accurate.
That's not enough for Pat Davis, who was forced to evacuate her Merrick home because the family could not remain there with their 1-year-old as temperatures dropped below 50 degrees. She said the outage map shows only 1,000 outages in the neighborhood, but "I do not know anybody south of Merrick Road with power, as well as many north of Merrick Road without power."
Newsday, Monday November 5: "Protesters demonstrate outside of LIPA offices"
Their frustration at a boiling point over the lack of power in their homes, about 25 residents of North Woodmere, Woodmere Park and Cedarhurst marched on a LIPA customer service center in Hewlett Monday morning, demanding to be heard.
A sign on the door of the large National Grid/LIPA complex on Mill Road read: "This office is temporarily closed."
LIPA was reporting that 263,000 customers remained without power as of Monday morning, down from the high of 945,000 a week ago. The number excludes around 30,000 customers in the Rockaway Peninsula, Long Beach, Atlantic Beach, and Fire Island whose homes were so badly damaged they cannot take electric service.
The outage map, a critical link to many customers seeking information on their anticipated restoration time, has taken a skewering since the storm began. First it reported thousands more outages than some hamlets or villages had actual LIPA customers.
On day five of the largest outage in Long Island history, LIPA received unprecedented levels of reinforcements -- 900 line workers from Canada, Florida and Arizona, some airlifted here with their equipment, according to Hervey. The flights were arranged by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo working with federal officials. The total workforce is now well over 3,100 workers.
LIPA spokesman Mark Gross said the number of workers in the field would be 4,300 by this morning, with another 1,000 being added by day's end, which would be more workers than any prior LIPA restoration effort.
This dramatic map shows areas where power is out (in red), where it has been restored (in blue), and where there was never a service interruption (in grey). It's from the LIPAnews Facebook page and from the LIPA Storm Center map update from Saturday, November 3:
A second map from the LIPA Storm Center shows each separate outage or set of outages as a push pin. Notice how the map is quickly overwhelmed with problems.
A third LIPA Storm Center map counts the outages by town, with a pop-up menu offering to further detail the outages by village. I had a hard time loading this map, but here it is as of 11:18 p.m. Saturday, November 3, 2012.
No matter how you visualize it, 450,000+ people without power is a lot of power problems.
From Nate Silver's NY Times weblog FiveThirtyEight, captured Saturday, November 3, 2012:
The Los Angeles Times electoral map, again a prediction from Saturday. Note that this analysis doesn't give exact numerical predictions. The Chicago Tribune links to the same map.
The Detroit Free Press runs with a map from Real Clear Politics:
The Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) interactive map, showing toss-up states in orange:
Thanks to Naomi Zikmund-Fisher, here are a few more:
From Electoral-Vote.com:
From election.princeton.edu, this map that shows equal area based on electoral votes:
A second distorted map, this one from Frontloading HQ:
Finally, this NPR map shows campaign spending by state, with the size of the state adjusted to match where the money is going. From the story "A campaign map morphed by money", this clearly shows which states are battleground states:
Look for more maps here on election night - if you find any more or know of any other that are good leave a comment and I'll add them in.
