Temperature and terrain cartography
Our new vector tile compositing technology open possibilities for streaming data into maps. This week I added gridded temperature data from our friends at Weather Decision Technologies into our live data pipeline. My goal was to integrate WDTs new real-time temperate data into a custom version of Mapbox Outdoors - the bigger picture idea is for us to open up live data streams from partners to anyone designing maps on Mapbox.com.
These images are a snapshot from Tuesday morning - capturing temperatures across the continental United States as the morning warmed up.
The sun was just coming up in the Northwest, and for the highest elevations, temperatures were still below freezing. Vector tile compositing allows map makers to draw labels above updating weather data.
A close up of the cool morning in Seattle.
Far to the south, temperatures were already surpassing one hundred degrees in Death Valley.
A wider view of the Southwest's alternating mountains and valleys - known as Basin and Range - show hot valleys but cooler temperatures at higher elevations. Vector tile compositing not only make correlations between temperature elevation apparent, but also allow for the use of Photoshop-like compositing operations that highlight such correlation.
A cold front moved through the Houston metro area, pushing cooler air into the Gulf of Mexico. Blurring functions in CartoCSS make gradations in temperature data appear organic and natural.
The cold front had not yet arrived in New Orleans, where humid air meant warm temperatures over land and water.
In the Northeast, colder air masses over Lake Ontario and the North Atlantic surround the warm air over land - bringing cooler weather to Maine and Boston, but not farther south.
All of South Florida was already heating up - even over the water.