Ok, Ok...I'll concede I'm a map geek.
But this is pretty stunning. Google Earth made imagery updates last week, updating the Tulsa Metro area imagery to 6/8/2011. They also did the same with Joplin MO.
This is stunning. From that altitude it's not hard to pick out the tornado's path.
http://tiny.cc/bh52w
This is the apartment complex I lived at in 1990 at 23rd St. and Texas (the 6 builing one with the pool in the center of the complex), it was just on the southern edge of the tornado. I used to shop at the Dillion's on 20th Street and the rail road tracks. As I commented to other people it went right through the most populated area of Joplin.
http://maps.google.com/?ll=37.064681,-94.481531&spn=0.002247,0.006507&t=h&vpsrc=6&z=18 (http://maps.google.com/?ll=37.064681,-94.481531&spn=0.002247,0.006507&t=h&vpsrc=6&z=18)
What's really sad is to use street view and see what used to be there.
I wonder if Google will ever have enough storage or technology to be able to house all their old streetview information, so say 20 years from now you can go online and see what an area looked like 20 years before? I know that the streetview info from my house is from late 2007, pre-icestorm, but I just saw one of the little cars drive by a few weeks ago, and I know I've seen certain other areas get updated fairly frequently. Seems like a shame to just permanently delete the old information when it could be useful to historians down the road.
There is an icon on the tool bar that looks like a clock, you can click on it and see older images. They actually have images of Vegas from the 50's as well as other cities. Check out the old images of LA.
It's only arial images though.
The streetview of our house is still the one with the debris from the 2007 ice storm piled up by the street for pickup. Looks like a disaster area. Oh, at that time it was a disaster area. (Maybe not officially though.)
Edit:
The aerial view is very recent. It shows the new pepper garden for this year, the vacant spot where we had a tree removed, and the yard is starting to turn brown.
Google did the street view survey of Tulsa in the weeks before and the weeks following the ice storm, so the views are a mix of streets lined with either healthy trees or debris.
Quote from: Red Arrow on August 21, 2011, 01:50:49 PM
The streetview of our house is still the one with the debris from the 2007 ice storm piled up by the street for pickup. Looks like a disaster area. Oh, at that time it was a disaster area. (Maybe not officially though.)
Edit:
The aerial view is very recent. It shows the new pepper garden for this year, the vacant spot where we had a tree removed, and the yard is starting to turn brown.
Should be from June 8th; as Google Earth's historical imagery gives you the date the image was made.
I find it mildly annoying that the government paid for that particular flyover (USGS, INCOG, and others), yet it's only available through Google so far, and Google's ToS keeps me from doing anything really interesting with it until it's available from another source.