It's cold and unusually snowy here in Seattle, so the weather seemed like a good theme for this week's Because it's Friday post. This gorgeous visualization of global weather conditions by Cameron Beccario is clearly inspired by the hint.fm Wind Map (now on display at the New York Museum of Modern Art), but encompasses the enire globe. Click through for its animated awesomeness: you can even rotate the globe to see the hidden continents and oceans, and use your scroll wheel to zoom. (Flash must be enabled in your browser.)
Click on the "earth" button at the bottom left for more interactive goodness, including the ability to go back in time to see historical weather patterns, choose a wind height to display (the default is ground level), zoom to or highlight your current location, and to choose from one of eight map projections, including the Equirectangular Projection shown below. (Tip: Choose O to return to the standard othographic globe.)
Check out the winds blowing into Seattle, which I can attest are very real. The animation is based on supercomputer forecasts from NOAA weather data and updated every three hours. You can read more about the animation here, and the D3 source code is available on GitHub.
That's all for this week. (But if you want more, check out our archive of previous Friday posts.) Have a great weekend!
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