What does it mean when it says "Unable to find a flow path for [city, state]"? I've gotten this a few times in New Mexico.
It means the drop hits the ground and evaporates or soaks into the sand, I guess?
River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, watch where it ends up
91–100 of 128 posts
Re: River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, watch where it ends up
#92At a high level, I really like this. Some UX concerns are all that stop it from being amazing: - The mouse should be a pointer, not a hand. Not only is that the expectation when an element is interactive, but it helps with precision clicking. - The map almost made me sick when it starting moving. It needs to be slower and smoother. You already let people speed it up, but start slower. - Dragging the map should be pos…
Hey, thanks for the feedback. I actually struggled on what to do with the cursor, since the map is draggable (when not at min zoom level) prior to a click and the default mapbox cursor is denoting that. On balance, I think you're right that a default cursor might be better. Re: interaction during the run, I thought about allowing you to interact and just pausing the run while you do, but thought that too many people…
Google Maps uses pointer by default and "move" when dragging.
Re: River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, watch where it ends up
#93Having it always start with a 'city' is a bit weird in places in the west. I tested it east of Lake Abert in Oregon and it calls it 'Lakeview'. The random location is easily an hour drive from Lakeview.
For a scenic trip, start it near the 'headwaters' of the Owyhee river in SE Oregon, SW Idaho or Northern Nevada, which gets you the Owyhee, Snake and Columbia rivers.
Re: River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, watch where it ends up
#94No clue one the true value of this aside from scratching an interest. Either way very cool.
Re: River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, watch where it ends up
#95I think you’ll get more traction with this if you speed up the analysis. Probably easiest done by determining an interpolation grid, fill it with values, and return nearest neighbor as the result.
Strictly speaking it could still be just as accurate as the uninterpolated approach, since when a raindrop falls, winds could place the drop on the ground some distance away from its release point.
Re: River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, watch where it ends up
#96Very cool!
Is there a way to put down a grid of raindrops in an area and display their paths from above? It'd be a great way to visualize watersheds.
Another (probably huge?) enhancement might be to calculate and display typical travel times along those routes.
Nice work - keep it up!
Re: River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, watch where it ends up
#97One thing which I suppose isn't surprising, but still was amazing to see at scale, is I put a drop in Colorado that ended up in the Gulf of Mexico. As the camera followed the path, it's nothing but farms, with the odd city sprinkled in. I got bored and left in Nebraska, but I imagine it's like that the whole way. It's obvious it takes a lot of land to feed everyone, but to see it like that really drove it home.
Depending on where you placed that drop in Colorado it also could've ended up in the Pacific. The continental divide is in Colorado and all water west of the divide will eventually drain into the Pacific and all water east will drain to the Atlantic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Divide_of_the_Amer...
I've been enjoying placing a drop right along the divide and seeing which way it goes. For example, up near Lenawee Mountain (aka A-basin). I've also noticed that up there, sometimes there is no route to either ocean. I guess it ends up in a high-alpine catchment and stays on the divide.
Re: River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, watch where it ends up
#98No clue one the true value of this aside from scratching an interest. Either way very cool.
Educational. The thing that strikes me is that the reasons why we're in an extinction event are not what most people think. I used to think it was due to cities or suburban sprawl. Not true. This tool shows it's farmland. A high percentage of the land you pass through on this tool is farmland. There are no wilderness areas anymore.
Re: River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, watch where it ends up
#99Beautiful idea - unfortunately it does load forever for the calculation to compelete on the website(at the moment). Found out about the city of Sibley, Minnesota now by Wikipedia and it seems pretty flat xD
Re: River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, watch where it ends up
#100I remember seeing tools like this in the past, used by governments for flood modelling and other activities, but one of the interesting things at the time(not sure about now) was that the elevation data wasn't granular enough in some cases water went uphill. Still good for modelling but you needed humans to interpret.