My Google Map Blog

For the last few years we have been celebrating the new year with virtual fireworks created by Steven Ho, whose work we have featured a number of times. His animation shows the 2011 Taipei 101 fireworks.

View it in Google Earth by downloading this KML file.

This year we thought we would also make available the opportunity to have fireworks at any location you choose. Our fireworks are a little cheaper than Steven’s as we decided to create them with placemark icons rather than 3D models.

Latitude:
Longitude:
Scale: (approximate size of fireworks in metres)

Create Fireworks

Play the tour in the downloaded KML to see the fireworks.

The post 3D fireworks in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

The most recent image to be found in historical imagery is currently dated November 30th, 2015. However, Google does seem to have been doing some imagery updates during the month of December, as we recently received two notifications from the ‘follow your world’ app for updates of Livingstone, Zambia, and Cape Town, South Africa, although the images added were from October.

We had a look at the after-effects of flash floods in North Korea that happened in August. We also looked at satellite imagery from other sources, including satellite imagery of the recent floods in southern India provided by Google Crisis Response, and the track of a tornado in Mississippi using Landsat imagery.
 

Street View came to Uruguay this month, and you can find a summary of all Street View progress for 2015 here.
 
 
 
 

3D imagery continued to be released quite regularly in December, although Google appears to have taken a break for Christmas. It is notable that a significant proportion of 3D releases are updates of areas that already had coverage. To see which areas have 3D coverage download our map.

The Google Earth API (also known as the Google Earth plugin) was deprecated in December last year and was expected to be shut down this December. However, Google decided to give it a temporary reprieve and let us know that it would not be shut down immediately and would continue to operate at least until the end of the year. No specific date has been given for the shut down. To celebrate we decided to resurrect the Google Earth version of the Santa Tracker. All you will see now is a tour of Santa’s village, but you can get an idea of what it was like from a YouTube introduction Frank did in this post.

GPS artist Yassan wrote the word ‘Peace’ across the earth by travelling around the world and recording his track. We created a similar message for Christmas but decided to cheat and do it from the comfort of an arm chair with the help of Google directions.
 
 

Frank updated his Google Earth flight simulator tutorial. If you haven’t tried the Google Earth flight simulator, or have struggled to use it, then be sure to check out his video, as it explains a number of important tips for the flight simulator that are necessary to get the most out of it.
 
 

We did some sightseeing, including looking at animal shaped buildings, toys in Google Earth, Star Wars related locations and some ghost cities. If you are interested in ghost cities then be sure to check the comments of that post for some other interesting locations submitted by readers.
 

We created several tools this month, including a way to find imagery captured on a specific date using the Google Earth API and a way to show Google Maps in a placemark. We also showcased OpenForis as an example of an application that works with Google Earth without being dependant on the Google Earth API.

The post The best of Google Earth for December 2015 appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Street View extended its coverage over the course of 2015, most notably in South America, Eastern Europe and South East Asia. We only started keeping a high resolution screen shot of coverage in March after Bangladesh and Greenland had already got Street View, so we are only able to show a ‘Street View changes map’ from March to December.

Street View changes in red. Previously existing Street View in blue. March to December, 2015. Large version here

Below are all the posts we have written this year about new coverage.

February: Bangladesh

February: Greenland

April: Loch Ness, Scotland

May: Madagascar and Candadian Parks

June: Catlin Seaview Survey

June: El Capitan, USA

July: Mongolia

September: Madagascar

September: The Philippines

October: Turkey, Ukraine and Macedonia

November: Bolivia

November: Kampala, Uganda

December: Jordan (historical sites)

December: Uruguay

Also see: Street View progress for 2014

The post Street View coverage for 2015 appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

We have looked at the paths of destruction caused by tornadoes in Google Earth imagery a number of times before. Nearly every one of the tornadoes we have looked at in the US occurred in the months of April or May, which appears to be peak tornado season in the US. Tornadoes can, however, occur at any time of year and due to the unseasonably warm weather the US has been having recently there were several tornadoes just before Christmas.

We came across this story, which says that one of the tornadoes had a record long track for the month of December. Google has not yet released any December imagery so we wondered if it would be visible in Landsat imagery. We used the technique described in this post to get a relatively low resolution Landsat image of the area captured on December 24th, the day after the tornado struck and found we were able to just make out the path of the tornado. We also downloaded the higher resolution version of the Landsat data and processed it with software from GeoSage as described in this post.

We were able to trace out the path of the tornado a distance of around 92 km (57 miles). News reports, however, mention damage to property quite some distance from both ends of the visible track (from Clarksdale, Mississippi to Lutts, Arkansas) reaching at least double that distance.

A section of the track as seen in Landsat 8 imagery. Can you see it?

Keep in mind that Landsat imagery has a resolution of about 30m per pixel. The visible track of the tornado is over a kilometre wide in places.

Shown above is only a part of the visible track. For the full track and two different versions of the Landsat imagery (cropped and compressed to keep the file sizes down) download this KML file. The KML also includes markers relating to some news stories and links to YouTube videos of the tornado or other tornadoes in the vicinity.

The post Seeing a tornado track with Landsat imagery appeared first on Google Earth Blog.