Post-earthquake Imagery of Nepal in Google Earth
by Timothy Whitehead on May.14, 2015, 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
[Update: Thank you to GEB reader AC for pointing out that the Kathmandu imagery is actually May 3rd imagery (I read the dates wrong) and does show earthquake damage.]
We have been keeping an eye on Nepal in Google Earth to see if any post-earthquake imagery gets added. We found quite a lot of March imagery that was captured before the Earthquake, but added to Google Earth in the last couple of weeks. There is also a fairly large image captured on May 5th, 2015 just over a week after the earthquake.
We also found two small areas with imagery from April 27th, 2015 captured just a couple of days after the earthquake. Interestingly though, they are false colour images and all the trees look red. Most likely a satellite designed to take images only in infra-red that was available at the time, captured imagery of the location and Google has decided the imagery is useful enough to include.
The latest imagery has not yet been added to ‘historical imagery’ so we can’t check the extent of the full image. It is likely a much larger image than what we can see and was probably intended by Google to be visible only in ‘historical imagery’.
Interesting false colour imagery in Nepal captured just days after the earthquake.
To find the above patches of red imagery, and see the approximate extent of the May 5th image, download this KML file.
We have not been able to identify any earthquake damage in any of the imagery. If you spot anything of interest, please let us know in the comments.
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