Now that you can search for user-generated content more easily on Google Maps, I checked to see if people had been creating and sharing information about the tornadoes that tragically tore through the Southern US states of Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much there in contrast to the mapping that went on for the Southern California wildfires. But I did come across some maps elsewhere that may be of interest.

• CNN: There’s a very good map here pinpointing areas hit, with statistics, pictures, and video, if you click on one of the red "pin" icons.
   
• New York Times: Pinpoints areas hit, and you can click on some spots to see photos or hear audio reports.
   
• Muhlenberg County Tornado Damage: A fairly simple map on Google showing damage in this part of Kentucky.
   
• NOAA Storm Prediction Center: Shows current conditions, and this map shows reports along with a list of damages and fatalities by location. See here for today.
   
• Tornado Video: A collection of amateur video shot and uploaded to YouTube. It is NOT associated with a map. Google Earth (not Google Maps) does have a YouTube layer, but that content is hand-selected, so it’s not likely you can find these mapped there. Also see this search at YouTube that will find tornado video uploaded in the past week.

Postscript: From comments below, see also these maps:
Tennessee Tornado Damage
Tornados By State
Tornado Reports

Related Topics: Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines

About The Author: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a personal blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan