The best of Google Earth for May 2017

by Timothy Whitehead on May.31, 2017, 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

We saw a lot of imagery of flooding this month, including:
* The ongoing flooding in Sri Lanka.
* Flooding in Peru, New Zealand and Madagascar.
* Another look at the Peru floods.
* Flooding in Queensland, Australia.

Using Sentinel-2 imagery we saw two large tornado tracks crossing Canton, Texas.

We had a look at a crack slowly forming in Larsen C ice shelf, Antarctica. When it eventually breaks off, the iceberg created will be about 5000 square kilometres and will be among the largest icebergs ever recorded.

We had a look at a number of landslides in Kyrgyzstan, a country which seems to be particularly prone to landslides.

We did a series of posts looking at satellite and aerial imagery calibration targets around the world. Some were quite difficult to find, but in the end we had quite a large collection.

We enjoyed Google’s April Fool’s joke – a fake data centre on Mars. We also managed to find Mars rover Curiosity’s tracks in Google Maps, and by downloading the full image, were able to find Curiosity herself.

We had a look at some strange patterns and other sights around Jiayuguan, China.

We had a look at how DigitalGlobe managed to transfer its vast archive of imagery (100 petabytes) to the cloud.

DigitalGlobe released imagery of the Mocoa Landslide in Colombia. We also had a look at a remarkably similar event, the Armero Tragedy, that occurred in 1984.