Hurricanes 2005

MacArthur Maze vs. U.S. Route 90
Some more material about updating road data after disasters that I missed the first time around (and am only getting to now). Via Mapping Hacks, a San Francisco Chronicle article that discussed updating driving directions in the wake of…
Google Reverts to Pre-Katrina New Orleans Imagery
Google has apparently replaced post-Katrina images of New Orleans with imagery from before the hurricane clobbered the city, and people are upset about that, the AP reports (choose your source for the same article: Boston Globe, Guardian, Houston Chronicle,…
Google Awarded for Katrina Help
Google has received an award for its work — by the Google Earth team and others — during the Hurricane Katrina crisis. Think back to that time and recall how so many people absolutely relied on imagery imported into Google…
Tracking Hurricane Wilma
Here we go again. Google Earth Blog has a collection of downloadable automated storm tracking tools (KMZ file). Google Maps Mania points to a couple of Google Maps based storm trackers. Spatially Adjusted links to ESRI’s existing hurricane viewer and…
A Small Hurricane Update
Kathryn Cramer reports that new Rita overlays for Google Earth based on updated NOAA imagery are now available. Meanwhile, Wired carries an AP story about mapping the storm surge from Katrina: surveyors are trying to create an atlas of the…
Hurricane Katrina Diaspora Map
The Hurricane Katrina diaspora map (details here) “was based on more than 40,000 postings on Internet ‘safe lists’ by Katrina survivors. ePodunk analyzed messages containing both the person’s hometown and the location after fleeing the storm.” Via Rebecca’s Pocket….
First Post-Hurricane Rita Images
Kathryn Cramer reports that the first post-Hurricane Rita images from the areas hardest hit by the storm have been posted by NOAA. As was the case with Katrina, the interface — starting with a base map index page — is…
Hurricane Rita Update
Fantastic multidimensional satellite imagery of Hurricane Rita from NOAA; via Spatially Adjusted. Also, you can now track Hurricane Rita with Virtual Earth; via Scoble. On an organizational note, I’ve combined entries about Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita into a new…
Tracking Hurricane Rita, Part Two
Directions has compiled a page of links to U.S. government maps related to Hurricane Rita; this will be updated as new information becomes available, they say. James Fee, in re ESRI helping various government agencies: “It seems that everyone has…
Katrina Maps and Photos: Behind the Scenes
Tyler Mitchell talks about the behind-the-scenes work to process approximately 1,500 NOAA images from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and upload them to the Katrina Image Warehouse, using open-source software; the basics were up and running within 48 hours. Via…
Oh No, Not Again: Tracking Hurricane Rita
There are several resources for keeping tabs on the next volley of tropical storms to hit the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. NOAA’s Storm Tracker page for Rita and Philippe has tracking maps and satellite photos. Google Earth…
More Post-Katrina Maps and Photos
Glenn of GISuser.com has been collecting photos, maps and other graphics related to hurricanes — Katrina in particular, naturally — on his Flickr account. Late to the party, but Microsoft has put in a solid, if buggy effort with…
More Post-Katrina Maps
It’s been a few days since I last posted on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Here are a few more links. Apologies for letting them accumulate. ESRI’s Hurricane Katrina Disaster Viewer is, according to ESRI’s Lisa Kensok, who submitted this…
More About Flood Maps
Forbes reports that FEMA’s outdated flood maps meant that many people in Hurricane Katrina’s path didn’t have flood insurance because, according to those maps, they weren’t in a flood plain and didn’t need it. More generally on inaccurate flood maps…
More New Orleans Flood Maps
More flood maps of New Orleans (see this morning’s entry). Kathryn Cramer, whose blog has turned into an immense resource for Hurricane Katrina information, links to a Google Maps hack that shows the approximate water depth in flooded areas; because…
Mississippi Channel; New Orleans Flood Map
Over on GeoCarta, Roger goes beyond the latest satellite and aerial photography of New Orleans (which is what’s getting the lion’s share of attention); he looks at NOAA’s survey of the damage to the Mississippi River shipping channel and has…
Google and Katrina
In addition to the Forbes article I mentioned yesterday, both the BBC and New York Times (free registration required) cover the use of Google Maps and Earth by ordinary users to collect and distribute information about the disaster — i.e.,…
Your Fault for Living There
A lot of insensitive things have been said about the people of New Orleans after the hurricane hit. To people who say it’s their own damn fault for living in an area subject to hurricanes, Troll Princess has this response….
Hurricane Katrina: Google Maps and Other Imagery
I’ve been getting e-mail from people asking about the state of various locations in and around New Orleans and other areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. I’m not the best person to answer such questions — I’m just someone from small-town…
More New Orleans Satellite Photos
Orbimage’s satellite photos of New Orleans post-Katrina, here and here, are in black and white; as a result, the detail is much sharper and the flooded parts of the city are much more visible, as the example above (courtesy…
Hurricane Katrina Update
I’ve been reorganizing my categories a bit; my Hurricane Katrina entries now have their own category. More satellite imagery: Before and after satellite images from GlobalSecurity.org. Landsat’s before and after images seem to have more detail than the others. NASA…
Hurricane Katrina: More Satellite Images
(Updated) More satellite imagery from the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina is being made available. Space Imaging’s Image Gallery has images of New Orleans before Katrina and Mobile, Alabama after Katrina (via Cartography). Digital Globe’s Hurricane Katrina Media Gallery has…
Hurricane Katrina: Before and After
(Updated) Susan Kitchens has compiled and sent along an animated image (680-KB animated GIF) that shows the New Orleans area before and after Hurricane Katrina passed through; per her suggestion, I’m hosting it on my server. See previous entries: Hurricane…
Hurricane Katrina: The Aftermath
(Many updates) Watch Hurricane Katrina’s path via satellite imagery or radar; both are NOAA pages and both require Java. Via Paulo. Kathryn Cramer has been collecting aerial images of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, along with some…
Hurricane Katrina
(Many updates) I’ve been looking for maps and satellite imagery of Hurricane Katrina. So far, I’ve found this page from the National Hurricane Center and this page (a popup) from the NOAA Storm Tracker site, which has many of the…