Tag: information design

  • How Big Was Irma?

    Like many Americans I followed the story of Hurricane Irma over the weekend. One of my favourite pieces of reporting was this article from the Washington Post. It did a really nice job of visually comparing Irma to some recent and more historic storms, such as 1992’s Hurricane Andrew. It can be difficult to truly…

  • Irma’s Impending Arrival

    Your author is on holiday today and is actually writing today’s post on a Thursday night train to Boston. But by the time he returns late Sunday night—a Monday morning post is not guaranteed—Hurricane Irma will have likely made landfall somewhere along the Florida coast. Thursday the Guardian published a nice article looking at the…

  • Hurricane Winds

    Irma swept the northern coast of Puerto Rico last night after devastating some of the Leeward Islands. What’s next? Well after the Turks and Caicos, Cuba, and the Bahamas we are probably looking at a Florida landfall. (Though in the last 24 hours the track has shifted ever eastward so Tampa Bay looks fine from…

  • Tampa Bay and Hurricanes Do Not Mix

    About a year ago Pro Publica and the Texas Tribune published a piece that documented the calamity of a hurricane striking and flooding the city of Houston. It proved rather prescient a week or so ago. So a little over a month ago the Washington Post published an article about the catastrophe that could await…

  • The Timeline of the Voyager Mission

    There are a bunch of things to look at this week, but what am I most excited about? Voyager. No, not Star Trek. (Did you know that the Vger entity from the first Star Trek film was a replica of the Voyager probes?) I am of course talking about the Voyager mission to the outer…

  • With a Side of Iodine Please

    We made it to Friday, everyone. And not just any Friday, but for the Americans reading this, a three-day weekend. (You Brits had a bank holiday last week, so whatever.) While Harvey has been in the news a lot, did you miss that North Korea shot a missile over Japan? Well it did. So this…

  • Plotting Cries for Help

    So I thought I would be done with Harvey coverage, but this morning I saw this map from the New York Times that plotted out requests for aid throughout the storm. You can really see the storm’s movement through the impacts upon the people. It’s especially true later in the timeline as the storm moved…

  • Rising Tides, Rising Disasters?

    One more day of Harvey-related content. At least I hope. (Who knows? Maybe someone will design a fantastic retrospective graphic?) Today, however, we look at a piece from the Economist about the rising number of weather-related disasters, but thankfully falling numbers of deaths. The piece has all the full suite of graphics: choropleths, line charts,…

  • Harvey’s Rainfall Part Two

    Let’s consider today a follow-up to yesterday’s piece. (No, I do not believe I have ever done a follow-up piece, but why not start now all these years later.) Yesterday we looked at the Post, Journal, and Times for their coverage of the fallen rain amounts in southeast Texas. But at the time, we only…

  • Harvey’s Rainfall Totals

    Hurricane Harvey landed north of Corpus Christi, Texas late Friday night. By Monday morning, Houston has been flooded as nearly two feet of water have fallen upon the city, built on and around wetlands long ago paved over with concrete. Naturally the news has covered this story in depth all weekend. Even leading up to…