My Google Map Blog

Archive for June 20th, 2016

Google Earth Imagery Update: The Dallas, Texas Tornados

by Timothy Whitehead on Jun.20, 2016, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

Google has recently pushed out another imagery update. Below we show approximate maps of where the new imagery from April, May and June can be found. There is almost certainly older imagery too, but it is harder to find.


June imagery.


May imagery. Red: Recently added imagery. Blue: Imagery as of June 12th.


April imagery. Red: Recently added imagery. Blue: Imagery as of June 12th.

To find the locations in Google Earth download this KML file.

As you can see above the new April imagery is almost exclusively aerial imagery, mostly of the US and a bit of Japan. Clearly aerial imagery takes a bit longer to process than satellite imagery. Strangely we have not yet seen any aerial imagery of Europe this year and very little satellite imagery.
[Correction: There are a few small patches of aerial imagery. ]

On December 26, 2015, there was an outbreak of at least 32 tornados, many of which were in the Dallas, Texas area. There is now some aerial imagery captured on April 28th, 2016, five months after the disaster. Nevertheless, the destruction is still very much in evidence, with the tornado scar over the Garland/Rowlett area visible from quite a high altitude. We have identified the tracks of the three strongest tornados.

We have in the past looked at low resolution imagery of the Garland/Rowlett area using both Landsat imagery and Sentinel imagery, but although we could clearly see the tornado scar, we could not see damage to individual houses.

Below are some ‘before and after’ comparisons. Drag the dividers left and right to compare the imagery.


before
after

 

before
after

 

before
after

 

before
after

 

before
after

 

before
after

 

The above are all from the Garland/Rowlett tornadowhich was the strongest, but we show only a tiny fraction of the damage caused. Be sure to check out the imagery in Google Earth with this KML file as a guide. There is quite a lot of new construction in the area so when looking for damage be sure to compare with historical imagery as a house under construction looks remarkably similar to a severely damaged house.

The post Google Earth Imagery Update: The Dallas, Texas Tornados appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Comments Off :, , , more...


Looking for something?

Use the form below to search the site:

Still not finding what you're looking for? Drop a comment on a post or contact us so we can take care of it!

Visit our friends!

A few highly recommended friends...