“In the end, what’s most remarkable about the campaign against Oregon’s wildfire map isn’t that misinformation found an audience. It’s that it worked.” ProPublica looks at how misinformation and conspiracy theories led to the downfall of Oregon’s wildfire hazard map.
Category: Disasters
Wildfires in Canada
So we’ve had some wildfires on our plate here in Canada. CBC News has a page tracking wildfires in Canada, including maps of wildfire location, risk and smoke. Richard points out that FireSmoke Canada (previously) is a forecast map, not a map of actual conditions, for which see AQMap.ca, which tracks fine particulate (PM2.5) monitors across Canada.
Unauthorized Waffle House Index Disaster Maps Taken Down
The Waffle House Index is an informal metric used to assess the severity of a storm in the U.S. South, because Waffle House restaurants don’t close unless Things Are Very Bad. But when Jack LaFond scraped Waffle House’s website to build a map tracking restaurant closures last fall, he got a cease-and-desist from Waffle House over trademark issues. It got resolved more-or-less amiably in the end, but the website stayed down all the same. A different map, Riley Walz’s Waffle House Index map, which I covered last fall, also appears to be offline now, for what I presume are the same reasons.
FEMA Risk Maps Purged
The current U.S. administration’s map vandalism isn’t limited to a certain international body of water. Maps Mania reports that FEMA’s online flood and risk maps have gone offline as part of the ongoing purge of everything related to climate change. One map, the Future Risk Index, has been salvaged by independent engineers.
Watch Duty
In the wake of the recent wildfires in southern California, Watch Duty—a simple, free app that provides real-time fire maps and alerts, and which prizes, and is prized for, accurate data, collated by its volunteer reporters—has become the most popular app on the App Store and is being hailed as an essential lifeline: see The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Verge, Washington Post (paywalls on some links).
California Wildfires, January 2025
Online maps of the current wildfires burning near Los Angeles:
- California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) has incident pages for the Eaton, Hurst and Palisades fires, plus this 3D incident map.
- The Los Angeles Times map marks fire origins and evacuation zones.
- Watch Duty is a nonprofit that also has an app.
Update, 3:50 PM EST (via Lauren Tierney):
- Esri’s Wildlife Aware map sorts fires by personnel assigned to fight them.
- Another 3D map from CAL FIRE.
Update, 10 Jan at 1:45 PM EST:
Update, 13 Jan at 9:35 PM EST:
- Good Maps of the L.A. Fires: “a summary of the geospatial industry’s efforts to map and analyse the L.A. fires over the past 5 days.” [via]
Hurricane Milton
NASA Earth Observatory mapped the Gulf of Mexico’s above-average sea surface temperatures (6-7 October) and brightness temperature—“which is useful for distinguishing cooler cloud structures (white and purple) from the warmer surface below (yellow and orange)”—as Milton crossed Florida.
CNN maps the impact of Hurricane Milton across Florida.
Riley Walz’s Waffle House Index map: “FEMA officials informally track disaster impact by checking if Waffle House stays open. This site uses bots to check if each store is accepting online orders right now, offering a real-time view of how Hurricane Milton is affecting Florida.” [Maps Mania]
A Map of Wildfire Damage in Jasper, Alberta
Fire forced the closure and evacuation of Jasper National Park this week, and the Jasper townsite itself was directly hit by flames on Wednesday. Parks Canada estimates about a third of the town’s structures have been destroyed. Municipal officials released a preliminary map today showing the damaged and destroyed buildings in the town. They stress that the information “is based on the damage that is visible from the street. We have not been inside buildings or seen the backside of properties. There may be additional damage to homes and businesses that isn’t visible from the street. Buildings marked as ‘not damaged’ on the map could also have internal damage caused by smoke and water. Consider this a preliminary description of properties affected in Jasper.” CBC News coverage.
Flooding in Rio Grande do Sul
Devastating floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, have killed at least 95 people and displaced 150,000 more. NASA Earth Observatory posted the above Landsat 8 image of downtown Porto Alegre (population: 1.5 million), as well as MODIS images of the overflowing Jacuí River. CNN has before-and-after Maxar imagery of Porto Alegre.
Satellite Imagery of the Eruption Near Grindavík
The Copernicus-2A satellite imaged the smoke plume and lava flow from the eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano near Grindavík, Iceland yesterday; Marco Langbroek processed natural-colour and short-wave infrared imagery to achieve the above image, which he posted to Bluesky. [Kottke]
Previously: Earthquake Swarms and an Imminent Eruption in Iceland.
Earthquake Swarms and an Imminent Eruption in Iceland
A swarm of thousands of earthquakes have been recorded on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula over the past three weeks. It’s a strong indication that a volcanic eruption is imminent. The town of Grindavík has been evacuated as a result. The Icelandic Meteorological Office has a page with updates and maps of earthquakes and ground deformation from the magmatic intrusion (examples above). A post on Earthquake Insights has more maps, plus geological and historical context.
Wildfires in Alberta
Here are some links to maps and satellite imagery of the wildfires devastating Alberta right now. The Alberta provincial government’s Alberta Wildfire Status Dashboard shows active wildfires and historical data; CBC News has produced four maps that distill and simplify data from that dashboard. NASA Earth Observatory has images of the wildfires from the Terra satellite’s MODIS instrument.
Extent of Tongan Eruption Revealed by New Seafloor Maps
Scientists have now mapped the seafloor around the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai volcano, and as a result we have learned just how massive the January 2022 eruption was. By comparing their soundings with 2017 data, they determined that at least 9.5 km3 of material was discharged. Debris was found 80 km from the volcano, and the volcano’s caldera has been replaced by a cavern 850 m deep. More from the NIWA media release and from ABC (Australia).
Previously: Remotely Operated Vessel Maps Tonga Caldera.
Wildfire Aware
Wildfire Aware is an interactive map of wildfires in the United States that lists fires by the number of personnel fighting them. Selecting a fire brings up a lot more information, drawn on 22 layers from Esri’s ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. [ArcGIS Blog]
Flooding in Pakistan
The satellite imagery of the flooding in Pakistan is insufficient to grasp how widespread the devastation is, unless you zoom out enough (which you can do at the MODIS page). The imagery focuses on the flood plain of the Indus River: it covers most of Sindh province and a good chunk of Baluchistan. See The Washington Post’s maps for perspective. The Earth Observatory and MODIS pages, as well as the CNN article, have before/after image sliders: Earth Observatory compares the situation to three weeks ago, the other two to last year.
Update, 1 Sept:
The ESA has released the above image based on Copernicus Sentinel-1 data. More than a third of Pakistan is now under water.
Update, 3 Sept: The Guardian has more before/after imagery.