The Map Room

Google Maps Mania links to NOAA’s collection of aerial tornado damage imagery from April and May, and has assembled a gallery of before-and-after images of the tornado damage (via).

Animations generated from GOES-13 satellite imagery of the supercell thunderstorms from the past week, including the storm that generated the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri on May 22: here and here. Via Phil Plait.

It’s amazing how clear the damage from tornadoes appears in satellite imagery. Above, an ASTER visible-infrared image of a tornado’s path near Tuscaloosa, Alabama: “In the picture, captured just days after the storm, pink represents vegetation and aqua is the absence of vegetation. The tornado ripped up everything in its path, scouring the Earth’s surface with its terrible force. The ‘tearing up’ of vegetation makes the tornado’s track stand out as a wide swath of aqua.” NASA’s Earth Observatory also has a set of satellite photos of the tornado tracks.

Previously: Southeast U.S. Tornado Maps and Images.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has satellite images and animations of the weather system that spawned so many tornadoes this week.

Google Maps’s collection of tornado maps and images. The Wall Street Journal’s map of storm reports. Another map of storm reports.

MSNBC’s tracking map showing the path of the weather system along which tornadoes bloomed. A New York Times map showing hour-by-hour tornado reports.

Satellite and aerial images from before and after the tornadoes: the New York Times’s interactive maps (with the clever slider); a gallery of images from Google.

Via All Points Blog, @googleearth and @nytgraphics.