October 29, 2012

Scary Beautiful: The Best Hurricane Sandy Maps

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My browser crashed three times to bring you this gale-force roundup of Hurricane Sandy visualizations. She looks rather lovely from here in unruffled San Francisco, but hey, unholy devastation rains down on our heads soon enough. Gaze deep into the mesmerizing belly of the beast, and stay safe out there!

NOAA’s animated gif: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was gif’ing when gif’ing wasn’t cool. This one shows Sandy’s path today from 8:15 AM to 3:15PM EST.

 

Wind Map, by data-viz artists Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg. This real-time map of hourly wind speeds across America existed before Sandy reared her election-skewering head. On most days, the map shows a cute white fur gently rippling across the country. During hurricanes, the brutal convergence of high-speed winds is downright hair-raising, as in images captured during Isaac (scroll down). See the live map here.

 

Hurricane Irene vs. Hurricane Sandy: Via Gothamist, which points out that Irene, which ranked among the top-ten priciest disasters in American history, “looks like a stuffed animal tea party compared to Sandy.” Cheers!

 

(Deep breath) The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies’ map of SSMI/SSMIS/TMI-derived Total Precipitable Water – North Atlantic: Or as I like to call it: “Ooooooooh prettttty.” 

 

WNYC’s Hurricane Sandy tracker: Which they’ve thoughtfully allowed you to steal and display all its terrifying glory on your own website, perhaps next to an inevitable photo of short-sleeved presidential disaster abatement?

 

Looking for form and function in your Sandy maps? Google’s mapping active shelters. Way to be prepared just in case, Greyhound Station of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Got more scary-beautiful Sandy maps to share? Drop links below!

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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