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I was noticing that when I grab and spin the globe, most of the river systems shown on the map disappear (as do the wind flow indicators). But a few major river systems still remain on the map.
In the United States, I thought it was interesting that the Missouri River (which starts in Three Forks, Montana) was chosen as that river. I assume the choice was because this is the longest river, but maybe not quite as well known as the Mississippi river perhaps. And I would guess that not everyone knows the Missouri starts in Montana.
When you let go of the grab, other rivers are redrawn. For the US, that includes the major river systems (including the other major contributors to the Mississippi), which makes sense.
Interesting visualization is all.
Where the Missouri and Mississippi meet, they each contribute roughly 50% of the water. The Mississippi was better known, so the Missouri became the "tributary" in name.
If the opposite decision had been made, the river would be even longer in the books.
Interesting. I thought it was because the river emptied into the Gulf closest to the state of Mississippi. Like, it would have been slightly unintuitive to have named it the Missouri River all the way down past those Gulf Coast states. The history of river names and deciding which name continues after a confluence is quite interesting.
It is an Algonquian name for the river, which the French transliterated when they explored the upper reaches.
The whole thing is called the Mississippi river because it was the first to be discovered and named, and the French name stuck (I forgot what the Spanish called it but that name didn’t stick)
A quick trip to Wikipedia says that the Spanish name was Río del Espíritu Santo, River of the Holy Spirit, and the initial French name was fleuve de l'Immaculée Conception, River of the Immaculate Conception, and later the fleuve Colbert or the rivière Saint-Louis.
> The word Mississippi itself comes from Messipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Algonquian) name for the river, Misi-ziibi (Great River). [1]
I guess technically it’s the Anglicized French transliteration of the Algonquian name that stuck. Why that happened has more to do with the French-Indian war.
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It's a total classic. Earlier this year I forked it, and added volcanoes, eclipses, time zones and more. Here
I am of the opinion that this kind of approach, and showing appreciation for this type of approach, amounts to belittling people’s efforts. I don’t think it is right. Additionally, the website you mentioned doesn’t even open.
Absolutely crazy take man. People being able to fork and modify/improve projects is literally what makes open source so amazing.
What are you saying? You don't want people forking open source code?
Something something about immitation being the sincerest flatery.
The website works for me.
I used to work with the developer of this. Great guy, and my memory is that he originally built this to teach himself Javascript. I think he may have learned that successfully.
In addition to NOAA Hysplit modeling and weather underground’s graphics for forecasting, this is my go to student intro for our high altitude balloon launches. You really get a sense of a living Earth
One of the rare resources on the net that allows you access to resources not normally obtainable, and the 3d globe view is also equally rare when scouting out larger regional weather.
Clicking and dragging the different map projections is a fun exercise too
If the goal is to allow arbitrary rotations and not treat poles as special, you need quaternion rotation, instead of pitch/yaw with unlocked pitch.
Nice to have web bulb temps available as that is a true measure of comfort level for humans.
Precious submission's titles are more informative:
> Nullschool Earth – Weather forecast by supercomputers updated every three hours
> Earth: A global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions
A fave of mine for much of the past decade, part of my morning info review and frequently consulted during various events (fires, storms, heat- and cold-waves, aurora, etc.).
The site has an absolute wealth of meterological data. Wind is just the start. Temps, precipitation potential, mean sea level pressure (MSLP) --- which can give a heads-up on tropical storms, particulates, pollutants (tracking air and sea routes by SO2/NO2 prevalence is fascinating, I recommend looking at past years' traces around the Cape of Good Hope to see the impacts of Red Sea attacks), wildfires (not just "Fires" under the Bio tab, but CO, SO2, and particulates), sea temps, aurora, ...
On sea temps, contrast current mid-Pacific readings with a year ago, to see the scope of El Niño:
August 14, 2026: <https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents...>
August 14, 2025: <https://earth.nullschool.net/#2025/08/13/1200Z/ocean/surface...>
Oh, and there's not just forecasts (up to about a week), but history dating to 2013, so that it's possible to compare conditions over time.
Other tweaks and twiddles: atmospheric conditions can be reported for a given altitude, from surface to remote stratosphere; grid density can be set low or high; interpolation can be enabled or disabled (values given are the average within a grid, this is particularly apparent when trying to estimate maximum wind speeds from a localised storm, for which this tool is poorly suited), and alternative map projections (ObXkcd: <https://xkcd.com/977/>)
Is this used as data and visualisation for windy.com?
I always thought it was their proprietary software. Nice!
I suspect both of these (and other weather / meterological visualisers) draw on the same data sources.
Nullschool lists its sources on the "about" page. Weather data generally come from GFS (Global Forecast System): EMC / NCEP / NWS / NOAA.
Side note: it pretty much floods the browser navigation history. Instead of pushing a new entry in history, you might want to `window.location.replace(newCoordinates)`
For the layer data, it seems they use a custom protocol to compress it.
The wind animations are so soothing. So much offshore wind potential.
Other "Fun" things to check on this site:
Mode Chem + overlay NO2 = all the polluting shipping lanes Particulates + pm2.5 = shittiest places to breathe right now
Overlay MI (Misery Index) checks out with what I'm experiencing