The answer, my friend
March 28, 2012 1:41 PM   Subscribe

 
Holy cow, that's gorgeous.
posted by rtha at 1:46 PM on March 28, 2012 [6 favorites]


Hey, everyone in a Midwest city! Spit straight up in the air, right now, and you'll hit some a-hole in New York City. Flyover states, my ass!
posted by NoMich at 1:47 PM on March 28, 2012 [10 favorites]


Oh this is so cool.

Apparently the wind is full of libruls because it mostly seems to be heading for NYC or Canada.
posted by saturday_morning at 1:47 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Damn. Cool!
posted by Slithy_Tove at 1:48 PM on March 28, 2012


Must. Hold. In. Snark.
posted by unSane at 1:48 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


This is neither the time nor the place to hold the snark in.
posted by clockzero at 1:49 PM on March 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


Wow, this is really cool. Thanks grouse!
posted by strixus at 1:50 PM on March 28, 2012


Very beautiful animation. But why does it look like the Hudson River acts as a windbreak for New England? Or maybe this is a temporary thing.
posted by benito.strauss at 1:51 PM on March 28, 2012


Hold the snark in. Don't turn this kind of thread into that kind of thread.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 1:52 PM on March 28, 2012 [3 favorites]


I think that windbreak might be the leeward side of the adirondacks and the catskills, benito.
posted by clockzero at 1:53 PM on March 28, 2012


For those of you in the Upper Midwest wondering about the awesome weather last week -- go back to March 21/22nd. You'll see the high pressure in the NE and the low over Texas that pumped all that warm air up our way.
posted by eriko at 1:53 PM on March 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


Beautiful.
Also, now I know why it is so cold today.
posted by charred husk at 1:53 PM on March 28, 2012


By Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg who are responsible for a lot of cool visualizations. I really like the animation, particularly when you zoom in. For a more traditional view, compare the US aviation wind charts. The "streamlines" view is most similar; the aviation data is nice because you can compare winds aloft, which make more sense than surface winds.

I'm going to indulge a self link here to my own Wind History project. Different source of wind data and totally different presentation, but in the same wheelhouse.
posted by Nelson at 1:54 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Some of the ones in the gallery are definitely worth checking out, guys. I'm very fond of March 21st.
posted by six-or-six-thirty at 1:56 PM on March 28, 2012


Mind-blowing.
posted by kcds at 1:57 PM on March 28, 2012


This blows
posted by coachfortner at 2:07 PM on March 28, 2012 [8 favorites]


So there's no wind in Columbia, Missouri? Strange!
posted by basicchannel at 2:08 PM on March 28, 2012


Looks like my bike ride home today is precisely into the wind. Of course.
posted by theodolite at 2:11 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


I prefer to think of it as showing the USA has having luxurious fur
posted by The Whelk at 2:11 PM on March 28, 2012 [12 favorites]


It's like Alec Baldwin's chest hair.
posted by Kabanos at 2:12 PM on March 28, 2012 [5 favorites]


Of course the spot of next to no wind near Columbia made me think of the Brouwer Fixed Point theorem- there must always be at least one spot on the globe where there is no wind.

Funny that it's in the US right now.
posted by Hactar at 2:13 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Since this was created as de facto advocacy for wind power, it begs the question*: what's the minimum threshold of wind speeds for wind power to be economically viable? I'm not snarking; I'm genuinely curious.

* fuck you
posted by roll truck roll at 2:16 PM on March 28, 2012 [3 favorites]


Just as I always suspected: Columbus blows.
posted by ubiquity at 2:16 PM on March 28, 2012


The wind is very beardy.
posted by not_on_display at 2:21 PM on March 28, 2012


Since it's not real time rather based on hourly reporting it's too bad one can't step back each hour.
posted by Mitheral at 2:24 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


very nice find
posted by pyramid termite at 2:24 PM on March 28, 2012


What this doesn't show you is that all jetstreams lead to Charlie Brown's Kite-eating tree.
posted by drezdn at 2:29 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


That instantly struck me as one of the coolest things I've ever seen on the internet.

So much better than this.
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:33 PM on March 28, 2012


these are the kinds of things the internet is good for. neat!
posted by ninjew at 2:37 PM on March 28, 2012


I think the ease with which people can assemble sophisticated visualizations of random data is going to be a big part of whatever it is that we end up calling the next big thing after the "social web" nonsense dies out.
posted by feloniousmonk at 2:37 PM on March 28, 2012 [3 favorites]


Related.
posted by palbo at 2:42 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


You really don't need a weather man to tell which way the wind blows.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:50 PM on March 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


Hey, everyone in a Midwest city! Spit straight up in the air, right now, and you'll hit some a-hole in New York City

As the elected representative of the a-holes in New York City, I fully support this initiative. Just bear in mind if it lands back on you, you're not spitting hard enough and should keep trying until it works.
posted by griphus at 3:01 PM on March 28, 2012 [5 favorites]


We seem to have killed it with love.
posted by Danf at 3:02 PM on March 28, 2012


This is mesmerizing. I'd be really interested in seeing past data for big weather events like hurricanes or tornadoes.
posted by sambosambo at 3:19 PM on March 28, 2012


We seem to have killed it with love.
posted by Danf at 6:02 PM


I hope I didn't hurt it by zooming in over and over and over and it just wouldn't ever stop! I was just trying to see if my ceiling fan would show up on there.
posted by orme at 3:19 PM on March 28, 2012 [3 favorites]


It's surprising to me that there are no circular currents in the US right now. There does seem to be an elongated circuit that dips down from Canada into the North Central states.
posted by Mental Wimp at 3:24 PM on March 28, 2012


theodolite: "Looks like my bike ride home today is precisely into the wind. Of course."

Seems like that's always the case. That's why the guys biking the other direction always look so smug. I could just punch those smug tailwinders.
posted by Barry B. Palindromer at 4:32 PM on March 28, 2012


This only further inspires me to create a wind import/export business. We're just giving away all that wind to Canada, and all they gave us was SCTV!
posted by antonymous at 4:38 PM on March 28, 2012


Those counterclockwise circular currents are caused by the rotation of the earth (or more generally, a sphere encased in a fluid). In the southern hemisphere, they rotate the opposite direction.
posted by Tossrock at 4:48 PM on March 28, 2012


The US has a faux-hawk. Poseurs.
posted by Huck500 at 5:13 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Looks like The Starry Night.
posted by SPrintF at 7:07 PM on March 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


This is really cool. Thanks for posting this. We've had one of the weirdest warmest winters in Minnesota ever this year. I'm looking forward to using this the next time I'm wondering why it's so warm, cold, wet, dry, humid, etc, etc, etc.
posted by marsha56 at 7:07 PM on March 28, 2012


They are using a very bad data source. Some of the sharp divisions you see are administrative boundaries between National Weather Service forecast offices.

(self-horn-toot: I built a similar visualization for the SF bay area using Java, about 15 years ago.)
posted by nixt at 7:10 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Neat. As a Canadian, though, I get frustrated with maps on the web, be it this one, or a map showing the potential results of nuclear weapons, or the effects of rising sea levels, or even where the districts are in the Hunger Games, act like nothing exists north of south of the US borders.
posted by thecjm at 9:15 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Oh man and it's zoomable without losing data resolution, this is amazing and something I have been looking for forever.
posted by AndrewKemendo at 5:20 AM on March 29, 2012


Annoys me too thecjm but in this case it's understandable because of the origin of the data set.
posted by Mitheral at 5:57 AM on March 29, 2012


What elevation is this? These are ground wind-speeds, correct?
posted by lakersfan1222 at 7:38 AM on March 29, 2012


wow! great title btw
posted by toastchee at 8:08 AM on March 29, 2012


Very cool.

Great title.
posted by WestChester22 at 11:30 AM on March 29, 2012


Looks like The Starry Night.

Interactive visualization of flow in Van Gogh's "Starry Night".
posted by Kabanos at 2:26 PM on March 29, 2012 [1 favorite]


And if you want to know how cloudy the sky will be for the next day, then this little harmless looking thing will tell you >= anything else.
posted by Twang at 5:46 PM on March 29, 2012


At the moment there appears to be wind flowing from many directions into a vortex in the panhandle of Texas. Strange. Maybe those aliens from The Arrival set off one of those little spinning devices that sucks in everything nearby into an apparent singularity.
posted by Philofacts at 8:11 PM on March 29, 2012


thecjm: the site *does* mention that they are looking for good data sources for other parts of the world as well.
posted by antifuse at 6:19 AM on April 17, 2012


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