The First Snow Map

If you are already bored with Smoky Mountain's Fall Foliage Prediction Map and are now waiting with anticipation for the first of the winter snow then you need to check out NOAA's First Snow Map.

Using historical weather data the First Snow Map provides you with information on when can expect to see the first winter snow in your area. The map uses climate records to show when the chances of snow at your location rise to at least 50%.

To discover when the chances of your first snow rise to 50% or above just zoom in on your location. The circular markers on the map are color-coded to show the historic date by which there’s a 50% chance of snow. If you want the exact date you just need to click on the closest marker to your location.

Disclaimer: the climate can be unpredictable.

The Map of Life

OneZoom is an interactive map which allows you to explore the complete tree of life on Earth. The application uses an interactive map interface to visualize the evolutionary relationships between all the species living on our planet.

Each leaf on the OneZoom tree of life represents an individual species. The branches represent the lineage of these individual species. The points where the different branches diverge on the tree of life show where different groups have split from one another. At each divergence point you can see the geologic time of when it is believed this divergence took place.

Red leaves on the OneZoom tree of life are those that are currently under the threat of extinction. When you zoom down to the individual leaf of a species you can click on that leaf to learn more about the selected animal from its Wikipedia entry.


If you want to know where all this life lives on Earth you can use the Map of Life which uses a geographical map to show where 937,810 species live on Earth. Using the map you can discover which species live at any location on the globe.

You can click anywhere on the Map of Life to view a list of species that live at that location. You can then click on any of the displayed species groups to view a list of the individual animals within that group. If you then click on an individual animal's name you can view a species range map and learn more about the selected individual animal from its Wikipedia entry.

The Map of Life is from the same developers who created OneZoom.

The Vintage Vancouver Railway Map

Interactive maps don't have to be complicated. Sometimes you can create a lot with just a few features. A case in point is the BC Electric Railway Map.

With only a few polylines on a custom designed basemap the BC Electric Railway Map has produced a beautiful looking visualization of Vancouver's BC Electric Railway Company transit network, as it looked in the early Twentieth Century. The map plots the historical interurban and streetcar lines of the network between 1890 to 1958. It also contains a few photos and Street Views of modern day Vancouver showing how some of the company's historical buildings and lines look today.

Of course there is a actually a little more to this map than a few polylines. It also includes some very well designed map interactions. For example, if you click on a map marker, the map uses Mapbox's GL's map rotation capabilities to zoom-in, tilt and rotate the map to provide a close-up view of the selected location. The map rotation itself is tracked by a gorgeous vintage looking compass rose, which shows the current map orientation.

I also like how the map content slides in and out in the map sidebar when you select a marker on the map. There isn't a lot of content on the map at the moment but the presence of the 'Chapter 1. - Stay Tuned' button suggests that there is more to come from the BC Electric Railway Map.

Play Portland Transit Manager

A Day in the Life of the Trimet is an impressive animated map which allows you to a view an animated playback of any day on Portland's bus and light rail network.

Using the map you can select to create an animated playback of any day and any combination of bus routes on the Trimet. You can even see how many people were on each bus during the map playback of your created transit animation.

By creating an animation of the movements of buses over the course of one day you can really see how the frequency and speed of the buses rises and falls over a day. The number of buses on the Trimet begins to pick up around 6 am. Conversely the number of buses on the network drops sharply after 10 pm. You can also clearly see the number of buses peaking during the afternoon rush.

Mapping the Economy

US Metropolitan Economies allows you to compare the size of local economies throughout the United States. Using the map you can can view and compare the GDP of U.S. metropolitan areas and you can also compare the size of different industries in each area.

Using the two drop-down menus you can directly compare how two different industry sectors performed over 13 years (2001-2013). The scaled circles on the map show the percentage that the industry contributed to the GDP of the metropolitan area. If you hover over a circle you can also view the growth trend of the selected industry in the area over the 13 year period.

The map uses a Mapbox basemap with Leaflet.js. The dynamic trend line graph is drawn using the D3.js library.

The Street Sounds & Street Views of Rio

During this summer's Olympics in Rio de Janerio Nissan partnered with Google to capture the excitement of the city with some special Street Views of the city. Nissan kitted out a Nissan Kicks car with Google's Street View cameras and drove around some of the important locations in the summer Olympics.

You can explore these panoramic images of the Olympics in Rio with Nissan Kicks View. Some of the Street View scenes in Nissan Kicks View also include 360 degree audio. This means that not only can you view the sights of Rio with Google 's 360 degree imagery but you can also listen to the panoramic sounds of the city. As you rotate around these audio Street View images you can hear the street sounds changing, as the audio is also dependent on the direction that you are looking.

There are quite a few locations to explore on Nissan Kicks View. However the most impressive scenes are definitely the ones along the Copacabana beach. These are the Street Views with the panoramic sound. Who knows perhaps one day all Google Maps Street View may come with panoramic sound.

The African Elephant Atlas

The Paul G. Allen Project has carried out a huge census to count Africa's savanna elephants. During the census the project surveyed over 350,000 square miles of land in 18 different countries. You can now explore the outcomes of this census on the African Elephant Atlas.

The Atlas maps the results of the census, showing the density of African elephants in the 18 countries surveyed. The census recorded 352,271 elephants in total. This represents a decrease in the elephant population of around 30% in just the last seven years. A fall that is mainly attributed to the illegal poaching of African elephants.

The African Elephant Atlas includes a mapped visualization of how the project carried out the census, using planes to conduct aerial surveys of the 18 countries. It also includes a number of tools which allow you to explore and query the census data by country, stratum and individual survey flight.


You can learn more about the habitats and the lives of African elephants with the Samburu National Reserve Street View Tour. Save the Elephants has been working for over 20 years with the elephants in Samburu National Reserve in Kenya.

Google's Street View Trek provides a wonderful tour around Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, in which you will be introduced to some of the park's elephant families. The tour also explains the work of Save the Elephants, who are working hard to protect and save Africa's elephants.

The tour explains how Save the Elephants monitors elephants on the ground, from the air and via GPS tracking. The organisation also patrols the park, protecting the elephants from poachers and works to rehabilitate injured and orphaned elephants.


Elephants are tracked not only to try and stop poachers but also to help scientists learn more about the lives of these amazing creatures. Elephants: Year in a Day shows the patterns of movement of five bull elephants in Laikipia County, Kenya.

This visualization uses Google Maps with CartoDB's Torque library to animate 34,786 GPS positions of the five elephants, captured over the course of one year. This year's worth of location data from the five elephants has been compressed into a single day on the map to illustrate the general pattern of movement of the bull elephants, regardless of season or individual.

The map also highlights local land use, displaying cultivated land and safe habitats through the use of colored polygon overlays. The land tract overlays help to highlight where the bull elephants have been accessing farmed land and raiding crops under the cover of darkness.

The Rise & Fall of English Football

The English Premier League has become a global brand. The result is that the EPL earns over £1 billion a year from overseas television rights. It also makes over a £1.7 billion a year from domestic television rights.

A lot of this money is shared between the 19 teams in the league. The teams supplement this income from the prize money they win from their finishing positions in the league each season, from ticket sales to fans, from sponsorship deals and from the selling of branded products.

Teams in the EPL are therefore very, very rich. This means that they can afford to buy some of the best players from around the world. In 1992 the EPL made just £7.6 million a year in overseas television rights. Therefore in 1992 while EPL teams were relatively well off they could not afford the huge transfer fees and player wages that they pay as a matter of routine now.

In 1992 there were far fewer famous overseas players playing in the EPL than there are now. In fact there were 40% more English players playing in the EPL in 1992 compared to 2016.

The Reckless Agency has plotted this growth in overseas players in the EPL by mapping the birthplaces of EPL players for the 1992 and 2016 seasons. The Premier League Player Birthplaces map includes a slide panel which allows you to switch between a map of the birthplaces of the players in 1992 and the birthplaces of the players in this season's EPL. Switching between the maps of the two seasons you can instantly see the huge fall in homegrown players in the EPL and the rise of overseas players.

Many English football pundits have questioned whether the rise in numbers of overseas players in the EPL has contributed to the decline of the national team. With fewer English players gaining experience playing in the EPL the national football team has a smaller pool of talent from which to draw. Other pundits have pointed out that the England football team were rubbish for years before the birth of the English Premier League.

The Greatest Sports Maps of the Week

With the Ryder Cup about to experience a climatic finale it only seems right to lead off this Maps of the Week round-up with a brilliant Street View tour of the 2016 Ryder Cup golf course.

Google Maps, Ubilabs and Turner Sports collaborated to create this truly impressive immersive tour of the Hazeltine National golf course. The Hazeltine Explorer provides you with a first hand experience of all 18 holes of the Hazeltine National and allows you to virtually explore the tees, fairways and greens on Google Maps Street View.

The Hazeltine Explorer includes a video flyover and a short description of all 18 holes. There is also an audio guide to each hole, with a few tips on how the Ryder Cup players might approach playing each hole.


Over 35,000 people completed last Sunday's Berlin Marathon. You can see how every one of those competitors fared in an animated map of the race, created by the Berliner Morgenpost.

The Berlin Marathon 2016 map animates every single runner in the Berlin Marathon on top of a map of the race's route. As the animation plays out you can watch all 35,827 of the athletes as they complete the course. You can even filter the runners shown on the map by gender or by their home-towns.

The Real-Time Electricity Usage Map

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) has created an interactive map to monitor electricity supply and demand in the United States in real-time. The U.S. Electric System Operating Map provides an hourly snapshot of electricity demand, comparing the actual demand for electricity with predicted consumption.

Regions that are currently experiencing actual demand higher than the forecast demand are shown in orange. Areas where the actual demand is under the predicted consumption are shown in blue. The size of the circles represent the system size of the regional supply area. Using the map system operators can instantly see where demand is highest and, if needed, divert reserve capacity from over-supplied regional supply areas to areas with higher demand.

The map and the related data visualizations were created using the Highcharts JavaScript charting library.