Scary Beautiful: The Best Hurricane Sandy Maps

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

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!

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate