

Bay Area Storm Watch - vsloo
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/12/11/0900Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-115.81,34.51,1154

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jychang
It took me a few mins to realize that this page is interactive. Press the
"Earth" button to set time/date, move to current location, height of wind
currents, overlay, etc.

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thrownaway2424
It appears to be an interactive control for changing your laptop's fan speed.

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jrockway
Web 2.0: making your top-of-the-line i7 desktop feel slower than an 80s
mainframe.

But at least you don't have to declare types on the variables! Such
productivity!

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sp332
Web 2.0: making the computer work so the programmer doesn't have to. You get a
beautiful, interactive visualization with near-real-time data that runs on
every platform (even my phone!) with a single codebase.

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fludlight
Dr. Jeff Masters adds some color to this data on his blog[1]. Also note the
second vortex off the Canadian coast[2].

[1]
[http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?en...](http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2877)

[2]
[http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/12/11/0900Z/wind/surface/l...](http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/12/11/0900Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-128.81,45.74,1154)

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pwarner
I don't know why people are so worried about the lack of snow at this point.
There is plenty of room in the reservoirs for rain at this point. Maybe later
in the season the snow will become important, but at this point I think CA can
store lots of liquid water

Some reservoirs can't be filled this early as the need to leave space for
flood control, but the big ones have so much extra room I imagine they can
store every drop.

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thaumaturgy
I don't think it works that way.

A few of the large California reservoirs, like the San Luis Reservoir and Lake
Berryessa, get their water from storm runoff in mountains that don't typically
accumulate much snow, but a large amount of the water storage in California
comes from Sierra or Trinity snowpack.

Unfortunately, a lot of California storm drainage is designed to move the
water to the ocean as quickly as possible, to prevent flooding. I think most
of the rainfall in the Bay Area that doesn't soak into the ground will find
its way to the delta or to the Bay rather than a reservoir.

Think of it this way: cumulative snowpack is a massive year-round reservoir in
California. See e.g.
[http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article3505269....](http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article3505269.html)

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jschulenklopper
Cool (eh, hot?) and impressive visualization!

Don't know which was first, but it reminded me of the wind map from hint.fm,
originating from 2012: [http://hint.fm/wind/](http://hint.fm/wind/) . That one
presents a nice black/white impression of wind conditions in the USA, whereas
this visualization from Cameron displays a broad range of weather conditions
around the globe with multiple visualization styles. Impressive what's
possible with D3...

[Edit: oh, hint.fm was mentioned as inspiration on the GitHub page
[https://github.com/cambecc/earth.](https://github.com/cambecc/earth.)]

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tonymillion
Thats not a storm, this is a storm:
[http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/12/11/0900Z/wind/surface/l...](http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/12/11/0900Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-8.13,51.46,1154)

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davidw
I recall visiting my uncle in Arizona for Thanksgiving one year. In the
afternoon, it rained _maybe_ one centimeter. It was the first thing on the
evening news.

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DanielBMarkham
First time I was in California, it was September. I get off the plane and the
recruiter picks me up in a convertible.

"See that cloud?" he points.

"Yep"

"That's the first cloud I've seen in almost three months"

I found that a strange thing to say.

A couple of months later, I get off work and go back to the apartment. I'm
watching Jeoprady and they do one of these "Action News Storm Team 7" break-
ins. They cut to the meterologist who's pointing out breaking news on the
triple doplar jetstream radar or whatnot.

It's rain. Looks like a tiny shower, maybe 500 yards across.

The guy says "Looks like this storm will be headed across I5 very soon, so
motorist should be extremely cautious"

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LarryMade2
a small snow storm will debilitate the valley and bay area... stuff like that
just doesn't happen too often here.

On the i5 rain the threat is real on first rains as the roads have trace oil
that will wash off and cars will shed months of carwash soap residue.

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JoeAltmaier
I've heard that before - is it urban legend, or is there some truth to it?

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chipsy
It's in the CA DMV handbook that the roads are most dangerous in "first rain"
conditions. You get tested on it!

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JoeAltmaier
Sure; I've answered that question on that test. It seemed odd at the time, to
find an urban legend in the DMV test.

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kylek
Love this visualization. Ben usually references it every day on
[https://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers](https://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers)

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Animats
Very pretty. But, despite what the web site shows, Silicon Valley is currently
at 63F/clear/calm. The site shows wind speeds of 36km/h. Not sure where they
get their wind data, but it's clearly low resolution.

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rasengan0
SF is so calm right now; i can't believe all the storm build up; we'll see at
tomorrow's commute

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ultimoo
Yep, it is a few minutes past midnight and I can hear the light rustling of
trees. No rain or anything 'stormy' yet.

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dmckeon
No beautiful graphics, but the stacked graphs and draggable index line seem
information rich:

[http://www.wunderground.com/US/CA/Sunnyvale.html](http://www.wunderground.com/US/CA/Sunnyvale.html)

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suyash
Look very nice on Mobile Safari, gestures and visualization is awesome!

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nogridbag
Looks like the storm affected archive.org's datacenter:

[https://twitter.com/internetarchive](https://twitter.com/internetarchive)

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daleharvey
I would love to see someone use this visualisation as the background to a "the
weather in X is" mobile weather app

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vertoc
Flying from LAX to SEA tomorrow evening... hope I'm not stranded at the
airport :(

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jedberg
If you manage to leave, that's going to be one hell of a takeoff.

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taurath
Cancelled my flight from SEA to SFO, which was supposed to land at 9AM
Thursday. Pretty sure whether indefinite delays or cancellation I wasn't gonna
get on that plane.

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rconti
Doing the opposite; SFO to SEA, but on Friday afternoon. Should be no problem,
but you never know with SFO. I've personally had good luck with that airport
but delays seem SO common.

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sixothree
Where do people in the bay area generally get their news?

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fluxsauce
Got a few options.

[http://www.sfgate.com/](http://www.sfgate.com/)
[http://www.insidebayarea.com/](http://www.insidebayarea.com/)
[http://www.sfexaminer.com/](http://www.sfexaminer.com/)

[http://www.kqed.org/](http://www.kqed.org/)
[http://abc7news.com/](http://abc7news.com/)
[http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/](http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/)
[http://www.nbcbayarea.com/](http://www.nbcbayarea.com/)

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nXqd
this looks fantastic.

