My Google Map Blog

A major winter storm is ripping across the eastern United States right now, with blizzard warnings stretching 730 continuous miles. Google Earth offers some great tools for tracking storms such as this, allowing you to really dig in and see what's going on.

To start, you can enable the "Clouds" and "Radar" layers under the main [Weather] layer to get a look at the current conditions. Using those tools with this storm helps to show just how massive it is:

The radar and cloud layers are actually positioned miles above the surface of the planet in Google Earth, allowing you to fly below them to see the original imagery. As a cute bonus feature from Google, if you fly below rain or snow you'll actually see the precipitation falling when you're below the clouds. Here is a screenshot with snow falling, though it's hard to see when it's a static image:

To get details for a particular city, simply enable the "Conditions and Forecasts" layer, then click the icon for a city to get a detailed forecast:

Of course, you can also view radar information on your favorite weather site, many of which use Google-powered maps (such as my favorite, the "WunderMap" on Weather Underground).

If you're affected by this storm, we offer you our best. Stay warm and safe!

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As we’re getting closer to New Years Eve, we already have plenty to celebrate here at StreetViewFun.com. We now have more than 10.000 StreetView images posted to this site since 2007. That’s an average of about 5 new images added every day! Earlier this year Google Maps StreetView (and StreetViewFun.com) celebrated 5 years. 2012 has been an amazing year for StreetView with many new countries added and some stunning and hilarious new images.

A special thanks to all of you guys who have submitted funny sightings!

(Psst… don’t tell anyone, but we have some exciting surprises for you coming early 2013.)