Disaster Data Can Be Beautiful

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Where’s Tropical Storm Isaac? If the latest system to threaten the U.S. was in NOAA’s National Climactic Data Center when John Nelson of IDV Solutions plotted the data for all tracked hurricanes and storms since 1851 on the map above, then Isaac is there somewhere — one among thousands of tiny, beautiful, aqua-green-blue points of light.

Click the image to view the map in all its large-format, high-resolution glory, or go to Nelson’s Flickr photostream and view it there.

Nelson has created other beautiful images by plotting data for global earthquakes since 1898, for all recorded U.S. tornadoes since 1950 (including animated maps by month and year), and a flipbook-format map of all major U.S. fires since 2001, to name just a few of his works.

(Click Image to Enlarge)

(Click Image to Animate)

Visit John Nelson’s blog and Flickr photostream to see and learn more.