The Remarkable Maps of Mr. Tornado

Last night I watched "The Remarkable Mind of Mr. Tornado" on PBS. Tetsuya "Ted" Fujita was a pioneer in meteorology, known for developing the F-scale to measure tornadoes. His studies led him to draw many maps of this nature.

What I enjoyed the most was his personal maps. When he was invited to the University of Chicago to work with professor Horace Byers, he experienced his first airplane flight. During the flight he drew this charming map showing the clouds he passed through on a multi-day flight with two stopovers on Wake Island and in Hawaii.

Via PBS, "American Experience"

This map is a bit hard to read at this size so here is some detail. Click the picture above to see the entire map at higher resolution.

In his own words "Without wasting the expensive flight time, I began sketching the vertical time cross section of clouds along the flight path. Shortly before 1600 JST, the aircraft flew into towering cumuli, encountering severe turbulence. I heard crashing sounds of dishes and utensils in the flight kitchen. A moment after, the flight became smooth and I saw a beautiful arc of low clouds.”

After settling in Chicago he began to document his travel throughout the United States and Canada, first by railroad, then by car.

He traveled through every state except Rhode Island. According to the map he only missed it by a few miles. I have chronicled my own travels in this manner but not with nearly as much charm or detail.

Highlights of this map include the tornado-chasing squiggles through Oklahoma and the green elevation contours.

More on Mr. Fujita here.
 

What is a Milk Run and Y

Y do all the major airport codes in Canada begin with a Y? This map, via They Draw and Travel, partially explains. It also tells you what a "milk run" was. Click for a readable version.

Here's a map of the weather stations across Canada with all the Y codes, and a couple of Z codes too.

Yum Yum Maps

Yum Yum is a travel magazine from the island of Hokkaido in Japan. They make their own hand drawn maps. My favorite one is Make Your Bento in Kyoto, showing where to buy the needed ingredients for a Bento Box and then where to enjoy your lunch.

The map includes pairing advice and a checklist at the bottom of the page. Here are some details.

Another map hangs in a child's rest corner of a shop in a mall in Shihoro on Hokkaido. It shows places of interest in the town.

In nearby Obihiro, at the Hotel Nupka, you can enjoy one of these beers...

 ... on top of this coaster.

Both maps are of the surrounding parts of Hokkaido. The beer is a "caution beer"whatever that means. From an attempted Japanese translation:

A caution beer from Tokachi "beer at the beginning of travel"...Tokachi is a label that maps the east Hokkaido area, which is rich in nature, to Shiretoko Peninsula and Nemuro. Brewed using 100% of barley from Dido / Naka-Tsuzu-machi.

There are several maps of New Zealand also including this 60-day camper van travel itinerary.

and this maybe too-cute tourist map full of personal observations.

Tastes of Sweden

A couple of months ago I featured the Flavors of Finland, a map/recipe mashup from Expedia. Now here's the Tastes of Sweden.

Taste of Sweden by ExpediaSE


The traditional provinces are all represented. From their outreach message:

 Due to Sweden's large North–South expanse, the variations between the local recipes and dishes are quite huge, and this piece enables you to explore these on a local level. What is even more special about the piece is the fact that it draws attention to both infamous and lesser known dishes and their rich histories so that in many ways it doubles up as both a test of our local culinary knowledge, and also a really cool education piece because we can click around the map in order to learn about each and every dish – including the likes of the Southern spit cake, salmon spring rolls from Västergötland, hare burgers from Medelpad, and even a lovely reindeer stew from Lappland.

Here is a lovely screen shot in case of page load problems

Parkadelphia

Philadelphia's data scientist Lauren Ancona has created this wonderfully practical guide to parking in the city. Parkadelphia shows streets colored by regulation - metered streets are red while residential permits are blue.

Zoom in enough and you can see the actual meters. Click on one for more specific regulations, including how many quarters you will need-for those of us who still use cash.

The site uses Mapbox, so it looks great on mobile devices, where you might need it the most.

The site is in beta so some of the regulations are under review. She is taking feedback from residents and has a nice little warning note in Philly-ese explaining the beta situation.

You can submit feedback from the white word-bubble icon in the top right,

as many have done.

Airline Timetable Maps

Airline Timetable Images is a remarkably comprehensive collection, compiled from the collections of Björn Larsson and David Zekria. I have wasted many hours looking through their collection at vintage airline maps for example, Air Zaire, 1978.

 The maps range in style from this highly schematic, barely legible 1970 Air Canada map,

to this geographically detailed schedule from Regie Air Afrique with artistic flourishes,

 

to this artistic take from Aeroposta Argentina from 1937 featuring a curved, oblique view showing airports(?)  with their hangars and radio towers, or are those trees? 
Click the image for a larger view.

Air Canada's maps were not always this schematic. Here's what it looked like in 1945.

My first airplane trip was in 1972 on Eastern Air Lines, from Philadelphia to Houston with a change in Atlanta. Looking at their map from that year confirms that Atlanta was clearly their hub.

My memories from that flight were the breakfast sausage (we didn't get that at home) and thinking "we must be over Alabama now so those must be the covered wagons" - I had a little confusion as a child about where and when covered wagons existed.

Here is one of the oldest maps from Eastern - 1933.

I wanted to show a current map for contrast but there are not many on the site to choose from. Here is a 2010 map from Emirates with the familiar spiraling lines coming out from the hub (Dubai). This map features an overabundance of detailed topography. The mercator-like projection may be helpful for showing the large number of northern European destinations but also uses way too much map space on Siberia and northern Canada. The map also shows how much more important Toledo (Ohio, not Spain) is than you ever thought possible.

Try this at home! You might find a timetable or map for some of your flights.

The Perils of Ancient and Modern Travel

An ongoing series of articles in National Geographic detail Paul Salopek's walk to trace the spread of humans throughout the world. In the most recent installment, he walks across the Hejaz of western Saudi Arabia, visiting ancient wells - the blue symbols on the map.

These wells were located a days walk away so that travelers would be able to traverse the desert region. Knowing the location of the wells was a matter of life and death.

And now for something completely different - a ridiculous comparison!

Today's electric car pioneers face a similar difficulty. Routes must be carefully planned around the location of charging stations. A recent article in the Mercury News details the first cross country trip in a Tesla by John Glenney. The article includes this map of their charging stations.

Tesla has a network of charging stations located close enough (about 265 miles per charge) to be able to travel certain routes across the USA. During Glenney's trip the Hagerstown, Maryland facility was not ready. He had a stressful trip from Newark, Delaware to Somerset in western Pennsylvania, arriving with only 11 miles left on his charge.

As the Tesla network expands, trip planning will gradually become less important as it has in Saudi Arabia, where drivers can find bottled water at gas stations. The wells now sit abandoned as traffic rushes past and planes fly overhead.

Vintage Gas Station Maps

Among my bountiful harvest of birthday gifts in May was a collection of old gas station maps of northeastern states and Canadian provinces from the 1960s-70s. As a collector/hoarder of these things, some were duplicates but others were "new."

These maps remind me of the unsung heroes of that cartographic era. Companies like H. M. Gousha, General Drafting, and The National Survey labored in obscurity while Esso, Shell or the state highway departments put their names on the cover. I was once offered a job at General Drafting at $7.88/hour. This was not nearly enough money even in the 1980s to justify relocating to Convent Station, New Jersey so I declined.  Speaking of New Jersey...


This map doubled as a help beacon. If you fold it the right way and place it on your dashboard it says "SEND HELP" in black against a bright yellow background.



When I tell people I was born in New Jersey and they ask "which exit" the answer is 109.

 

This map also does the vintage upside down gimmick for southbounders. Stop! Don't look at this if you're heading north!

Welcome to Maine! Sure we have nice forests, lakes and oceanside vistas but none of that compares to our beautiful new Archives building.

New York is too big to fit clearly on one side of a map. The lucky folks in Elmira are in the Great Overlap so they don't have to guess which side of the map to open.

New York also appeared to annex three of Canada's largest cities here.  
UPDATE: I forgot about Hamilton so actually four.

For a Canadian perspective here are two views of Nova Scotia, the first one is from the tourist bureau and has a cute scenic tours guide on the back page. The 1970s fonts are nice too.

I also think the scenery on the cover is nicer than the Maine map but that's just my strange opinion.

The Esso (General Drafting) take on the same geography. North is up on this one, not slanted to follow the peninsula's orientation like the map above.

Happy motoring!

The Negro Motorist Green Book

Fifty years ago, I was born the Civil Rights Act was passed. The Negro Motorist Green Book provides a good example of how difficult travel was for African-Americans before passage of the Act. Published in the 1930s-1960s, this book listed places where travelers could shop, stay, eat and get gas without being refused service, or suffering a much worse fate. A copy of the 1949 edition can be found here. 

The book lists accommodations by type for the United States as well as Canada, Mexico and Bermuda. Here is a sample page.

Unfortunately there are no maps. I was curious about what this would look like on a map so I decided to pick a city and map the addresses. I chose Memphis for several reasons. It's a good size (not too many points, but enough to make it interesting) and it's a place I'm entirely unfamiliar with so I would not have any preconceived expectation of what the map would show. One final random reason is that I had flipped to the Tennessee page when thinking about this project. Click the map below for better legibility.

I used a well-known mapping service to locate the addresses and ArcGIS Online for the background maps. A few assumptions on street names were needed. Landerdale and Lauderdale were assumed to be the same street as were Beale St and Beale Ave*. Unsurprisingly there is a clear cluster one side (south) of town, while almost nothing on the other side. Here is a detailed map of the south side cluster.

Most of the businesses were located near the Beale Street music district, almost certainly not a coincidence. Of course, the landscape is very different today. Most of these businesses are gone, the street pattern has been altered and there was no FedEx Forum (or FedEx, Memphis Grizzlies, or Disney on Ice) in 1949. Here is a blueprint map I was able to dig up from 1949. 

The passage of the Civil Rights Act has made the Green Book obsolete so fortunately for travelers today my map is just a historical curiosity, not a necessary guide.

* This assumption appears to be correct based on the blueprint map.

Some Excellent Subway Inspired Maps

Summer's here, the kids are getting out of school and the NHL's ridiculously long playoffs are finally over. Time to start making vacation plans - if you actually have any spare time or money. Cameron Booth has some wonderful schematic subway style maps to help you plan your journey. Here is his U.S. Routes as a Subway Map - click to see a legible image.

This map has been accepted into the NACIS Atlas of Design. A close up view of it shows a different look at the U.S. than we are generally accustomed to,

The important cities are at the highway junctions and ends. Larger cities such as Detroit and San Francisco are pretty unimportant looking whereas Shamokin Dam and Hurley are major crossroads. Buffalo doesn't even rate on this map.

If you prefer higher speed travel and bland scenery here are the U.S. Interstates.

This time some of the important places are Cove Fort, Utah and Florence, South Carolina. Oh and some place called Chicago. Buffalo, New York is on this map but Buffalo, Wyoming is much more important.

If you prefer a ride on the train here's the Amtrak system. Finally some respect for Buffalo!

If you're in Europe there's the E-Road Network...

or the TGV trains.

In addition to being pretty to look at, these maps might actually be helpful for planning your itinerary. Happy vacation season!