How to View Weather Maps in Google Earth

37 Responses (Yours?) | Saturday, November 10th, 2007 « Previous Next »

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When I was a kid, I wanted to be a Meteorologist when I grew up. Well, I still haven’t grown up. And… I still love to play with the weather. I use WeatherBug on my computer, for many reasons. But today, Google announced a VERY cool new feature for their Google Earth application.

Google Earth now has interactive weather maps. Google Earth combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips. The current collection contains a global hurricane tracking tool, global cloud maps, severe weather warning data and radar data from NOAA for the US, weather observations for the US from WeatherBonk, a real-time day/night viewing tool, and the global annual lightning flash rate map from NASA.

The newest version of Google Earth also includes a feature to check out the world beyond Earth! Switch your view to see the sky above your Earth location, and explore far-away galaxies, nebulae, and more. Zoom in to see imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope, learn about the lifecycle of a star, or even view the constellations. After all, the Earth doesn’t sit in a vacuum… that would be an awful waste of space.

For most of us, the free version of Google Earth is quite enough. There are pro and plus versions, but I believe that those would only be useful to hard core weather people, meteorologists, and the like. For me… free is where it’s at. I can see that it’s cloudy in Seattle (go figure!)… and what’s this? PINK clouds above Wirelesspacket’s house? That can’t be good. Who ever heard of fluffy pink clouds?

After this was published, a reader emailed me with this additional information. I thought you might like these alternatives, so decided to include it within this post:

It is an interactive map (which uses Google Earth). Weather .com has been using it for about 4 months that I know of. Shortcut to Site.

Double click on the interactive and then it works just like Google Earth (It is GE actually) without running the program. Then click on the tab for “Weather Layers”.

You can check radar or cloud or both. You can get pretty close to the exact area you live and see the clouds and radar if there is bad weather in the area. You can also adjust the transparency of the
clouds. It is pretty cool website.

Another thing I like is by Accuweather it is a program that runs in the bottom tray of your web page on Firefox. It runs on both OS X and Windows. I like this better than weather bug, because it has the current temperature and current weather icon and the up coming day and the next day’s weather. If you put your cursor over the radar icon a small radar map appears. If your cursor goes over the day the conditions and wind speed appear. If you click on them it brings you to the Accuweather web page. You can get this feature at the Firefox
Ad On’s page and go to the Forecastfox link.

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37 Comments

rssdreams Web Indepth

November 11th, 2007
at 3:25am

Windows Vista Torrent

November 11th, 2007
at 5:18am

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Weather

November 11th, 2007
at 10:00pm

Original post:How to View Weather Maps in Google Earthby at Google Blog Search: weather Blog tag: Weather Technorati tag: Weather

in47

November 11th, 2007
at 3:25am

Weather

November 11th, 2007
at 6:00pm

Original post:How to View Weather Maps in Google Earthby at Google Blog Search: weather Blog tag: Weather Technorati tag: Weather

kevin

November 12th, 2007
at 3:05am

How to Erase Files Securely - Nov 10, 2007How to View Weather Maps in Google Earth - Nov 10, 2007 There’s Nothing Wrong with Windows Vista - Nov 10, 2007 Dog Pictures - Nov 10, 2007 Wicket, the Internet Puppy - Nov 10, 2007

Flo's blog - A blog about life, IT and nonsense.

November 13th, 2007
at 11:20pm

[IMG ]Ich habe das inChris Pirillo’s Bloggefunden. Er meint dazu:

chadt4

November 10th, 2007
at 12:31pm

Wow! Nice one Chris!

lodman

November 10th, 2007
at 12:40pm

Second

Fantikerz

November 10th, 2007
at 1:24pm

Google magic my friend.. Google magic…

buckamoona

November 10th, 2007
at 2:37pm

weather bug is spyware…?!

owen0334

November 10th, 2007
at 3:34pm

You would have made an excellent weather man. “As you can see, there is a ball of snot over the pacific northwest.”

jean9452

November 10th, 2007
at 6:12pm

WOW, thx Chris for telling us

Nikiaf

November 10th, 2007
at 11:01pm

wow what will google do next!

lolla2010

November 11th, 2007
at 12:52am

so how du get it then

chadt4

November 11th, 2007
at 12:55am

Yes, Weatherbug is spyware. I had it on my computer a few years ago and I ran a virus check a few days ago and minibug.exe popped up.

neicedogs19

November 11th, 2007
at 1:36am

Google Earth is good, but if you go to Live Maps and zoom in then click on birdseye view, you can see like the brands on the clothes that people are wearing. You can also see the sides of buildings unlike google earth.

sirfatalx

November 11th, 2007
at 3:50am

Weather Bug is bad. It has spyware.

oakaleafy

November 11th, 2007
at 5:07am

the awesome screen saver!

nickjuly004

November 11th, 2007
at 6:23am

I like PB and J too. =)

klasmanis

November 11th, 2007
at 10:10am

thanks, weather nut as i am, this will be sweet

pcobs2001

November 11th, 2007
at 8:25pm

I wanted to be a meteorologist too. Went so fat as to take a atmospheric chemistry class! And growing up sucks…so why bother! I agree.

pcobs2001

November 11th, 2007
at 8:27pm

Even used to go storm chasing! Google earth weather ROCKS!!!

Chris Hockey

November 11th, 2007
at 4:40pm

Any plans to change back to full text feeds Chris? This is a great post, but here’s all I could see of it in feeddemon: http://www.screencast.com/users/chris.hockey/folders/Jing/media/ea88bcfa-7d9c-4229-914a-b2e6462a8c79

crazymml

November 12th, 2007
at 10:14am

So cool, just what I was wanting. Thanks for sharing!

crazymml

November 12th, 2007
at 10:25am

Please help, I so want to see this but not getting it to show the weather, even after download new version. What is the trick?

Adam

November 12th, 2007
at 4:00am

Another interesting feature on google earth. This piece of software can be put to innumerable uses.

luisx

November 12th, 2007
at 11:59am

wow 5min, and he doesnt tells how to do it, he just tells that it is possible… misleading title maybe?…. for those wondering how, its just in the left, layers, select weather and there you go =)