Searching For Southern Tornado Maps

Feb 6, 2008 at 7:15pm ET by Danny Sullivan

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

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, maintains a personal blog called Daggle and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.

See more articles by Danny Sullivan >

Share, Bookmark & Discuss This Article
More:

See more stories like this in the Members Library! Check out the Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines sections of the Members Library where this story is filed. Members also get access to exclusive video content, a members-only weekly & monthly newsletter, plus more. Check out all the benefits!

FREE DAILY SEARCH NEWS RECAP!

Stay on top of all the search news with our daily summary, the SearchCap newsletter. View a sample ›

STAY CURRENT THROUGHOUT THE DAY

The Search Engine Land feed keeps you informed as news happens. SEE ALL FEEDS »

Searching For Southern Tornado Maps

FREE DAILY SEARCH NEWS RECAP!

STAY CURRENT THROUGHOUT THE DAY

Get Your Search Engine Land Premium Membership!

Get Your Search Engine Land
Premium Membership!