A new tool from The Weather Channel utilizes Microsoft’s Virtual Earth to let visitors drift through the clouds and weather systems from the desktop.
The always popular topic of weather can be seen from a new perspective at the Weather Channel website. Their latest piece of meteorological gadgetry features Microsoft’s Virtual Earth as the backdrop for rain, snow, and other mixtures of weather.
This Interactive Weather Map provides a few tools to make the visitor’s experience a more appealing one when looking for stormy conditions. As in Virtual Earth’s implementation, people can zoom in and out of views of an area, down to the Bird’s Eye view Microsoft offers for some cities.
Weather conditions may be seen as colored clouds on the map. Green indicates rain, and at press time can be seen in the Pacific Northwest. Winter is still in action in the Northeast, with grey clouds obscuring much of Pennsylvania and some of upstate New York.
The map’s transparency can be adjusted with a slider control. Zero transparency lets the weather obscure the underlying map. Adjusting it permits the map features to be seen underneath the prevailing cloud conditions.
Switch the weather layer from “Radar” to “Clouds,” and the prevailing cloud cover appears. The colors of the clouds represent their temperature. The two layers can be active at the same time, but only the green rain clouds show through clearly.
People who like to watch the pretty clouds go by can hit the Animation ‘play’ button and see the sequence of movement. The layer in view will determine the period of time rendered for the cloud motion.
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