[HN Gopher] Drop a raindrop anywhere in the world and watch wher...
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Drop a raindrop anywhere in the world and watch where it ends up
Author : slowhand09
Score : 468 points
Date : 2022-01-07 17:16 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (river-runner-global.samlearner.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (river-runner-global.samlearner.com)
| irrational wrote:
| That's disappointing. I clicked in my backyard, but it started
| from a point about 20 miles south of my house. I tried a number
| of different times with the same results. I even have a creek at
| the bottom of the hill in my backyard that I assumed it would
| start with.
| vollmond wrote:
| I would assume there's a floor on the size of waterway it
| starts with. I have the same situation (well, less so) in that
| my backyard is 3 blocks from a named creek on the map, but it
| started me several miles away on the larger creek that my local
| one flows into.
|
| Edit: also seems to generalize your location - pretty sure it's
| just figuring out the town I clicked in, then going from there.
| smm11 wrote:
| I always keep in mind when I have my first cup of coffee in the
| morning that it might have a bit of the last breath of Elvis in
| it, or diarrhea from a T-Rexx.
| toper-centage wrote:
| I wonder if by diffusion alone its been enough time that
| touching Elvis breath atoms is a certainty within a year?
| elefantastisch wrote:
| You probably breathe atoms from Elvis in every single breath
| you take.
|
| https://futurism.com/estimating-how-many-molecules-you-
| breat...
| Cd00d wrote:
| Nit: I believe Elvis was buried, and not that long ago, so
| the likelihood that enough of him has decayed into
| atmosphere for you to be breathing him at even 1 molecule
| per breath is very low.
|
| If you start with the same premise as your linked article,
| and say how much breath you share with Elvis's last
| _breath_ , then you can probably assume an atmospheric
| distribution close enough to the Cesar one in the article.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Sounds like Charlie Brown talking to Pigpen in _A Charlie Brown
| Christmas_.
|
| "Don't think of it as dust. Think of it as maybe the soil of
| some great past civilization. Maybe the soil of ancient
| Babylon. It staggers the imagination. You may be carrying soil
| that was trod upon by Solomon, or even Nebuchadnezzar."
| kingcharles wrote:
| The percentages weigh in favor of dinosaur poopoo coffee.
| [deleted]
| gnabgib wrote:
| This has been posted a few times before (looks like 3 times), the
| May/2021 post had quite a bit of discussion 877pts,
| 127comments[0].
|
| The apparent author (@samlearner) also joined HN to chip in[1]
| some comments/react to feedback.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27297689 [1]:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=samlearner
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I remember the last time this was posted, it was only for the
| contiguous 48 states of the US. Excited to try it for Alaska
| and worldwide, now we can do the seven summits!
| toss1 wrote:
| Cool!
|
| I tried to drop near the North American continental divide to
| sort of get a random path to the east or west, expecting pacific
| or to the Mississippi river to the Gulf of Mexico, and it wound
| up ending the the Great Salt Lake of Utah.
|
| TIL... thanks!
| benatkin wrote:
| The author has other projects: https://www.samlearner.com/
|
| One is Pittsburgh Steps, where I read "There are more than 800
| sets of public outdoor stairways in Pittsburgh, more than any
| other city in the United States."
|
| https://pittsburgh-steps.samlearner.com/
|
| I was surprised it had more than San Francisco. This says San
| Francisco has 700. It's by "sets of steps". I wonder if SF has
| more average steps per set of steps resulting in more total
| steps. Even if not, I think it must have more easily accessible
| by public transportation, as there are many in other bay area
| cities including Berkeley.
| https://socalstairclimbers.com/tag/berkeley-stair-walking/
| efficax wrote:
| Anecdotally, Pittsburgh felt hillier in general than San
| Francisco, although San Francisco does have some greater
| changes in elevation
| reaperducer wrote:
| San Francisco could learn a bit from Pittsburgh and put in
| some public funicular railways.
| samwillis wrote:
| Is there a way to turn off the auto play of the fly through after
| you click, without having to click pause each time? I'm more
| interest in just clicking around and seeing how the route
| changes.
| samlearner wrote:
| Hey! So the solution I've got in place was actually kind of a
| compromise solution originally. I had it jump right in at first
| and people asked to disable autoplay, so I tried completely
| shutting it off and a lot of people missed that you could run
| the path altogether. Settled on this 5 second timer, but I
| think some kind of option to disable it is a good idea. I'll
| work on adding that in. If you'd like, you can submit it that
| or other suggestions as an issue here:
| https://github.com/sdl60660/river-runner
| atonalfreerider wrote:
| What is the general guidance on hinting to users that they
| should use a feature? It's always a shame when you design
| something really cool, and users miss it.
| samlearner wrote:
| Generally, I've found that if it's active at all (requires
| a click, reading something, opting-in etc) the vast
| majority of people will miss it.
| samwillis wrote:
| I think you are kind of right on this, for me the "really
| cool thing" is seeing the routs not the fly through. I
| wouldn't be surprised if that was the same for most people.
| I think it's one of those cases (which I have done myself,
| multiple times) when you build something and you think the
| best thing is this clever thing you built, and you love it,
| but actually the basic functionality is the "cool bit" most
| people want.
|
| If it were me I would not have an auto play at all but a
| really big fat arrow pointing at the play button saying
| "this fly though is really cool". Might not seem
| "professional", but it works from experience.
| samlearner wrote:
| Ha, I don't want to tell you you're wrong, but having
| heard from a lot of people on this, I'm not sure this is
| right. The vast majority of people I hear from seem as or
| more interested in the flyover than the routing itself.
| And that's why I have to strike a balance here.
| zeke wrote:
| I agree that I mostly want to see which rivers the drop
| flows to but really enjoyed the flight down the Savannah
| river and seeing how winding it is. Spent a week canoeing
| it a long time ago.
| samwillis wrote:
| Ha ha, yep. Us creative types do like to have our
| opinions about what other people build.
|
| Love it BTW!
| ehsankia wrote:
| Same, found that I had to click the "X" next to the pause
| before the autoplay kicks in (you have like 5s). Then you can
| click another right away.
| hammock wrote:
| There's no such X on mobile :(
| ehsankia wrote:
| Wow, yeah the experience is much worse on mobile. You have
| to wait for it to zoom in, press X, wait for it to zoom
| out, press X again.
| charcircuit wrote:
| It couldn't find the stream on my property.
| divbzero wrote:
| How well does the model work along edge cases such as the Parting
| of the Waters [1]?
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parting_of_the_Waters
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Such a fun project, I shared it widely with climbing and rafting
| friends last time it was posted. Stoked to see you've added the
| rest of the globe.
|
| It would be funny to see an easter egg for when I tried dropping
| into Mauna Loa crater, for it to go right to the sky and later
| fall as rain... but then you'd have to model atmospheric
| currents, maybe beyond scope ;)
| soheil wrote:
| Epic! Here to point out the obvious. Raindrops evaporate and also
| typically end up in water tables specially in arid regions.
| elicriffield wrote:
| This is more fun if you think of it as if i pee on the ground
| where does it go.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Gradient descent in action.
| sabujp wrote:
| I'm dropping it in places in death valley that i'm sure will
| never make it to the amargosa river unless the entire valley
| floods
| rkuykendall-com wrote:
| This is incredibly cool! I clicked my home town of San Antonio
| and watched it flow all the way to meet the ocean at Fins in Port
| Aransas where I ate back in March! I never would have guessed
| that.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| Not a substantive comment here, just saying thanks for this
| extremely cool thing.
| chrisco23 wrote:
| I second the notion.
| arecurrence wrote:
| They should add place markers for hydrological apexes like Snow
| Dome in Canada. Fun to see single pixel shifts result in water
| traveling to a whole other ocean :)
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| For a list of these to try, see
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_divide
| benmccann wrote:
| One of the coolest projects I've seen built with Svelte!
| acomjean wrote:
| We used to do this kind of analysis when I worked in Civil
| Engineering. For large landfill designs the drainage before
| should be the same as after. We used a tool called TR55 to model
| the flow depending on the type of surface, to design diversion
| swales (channels) to move the rain runoff.
|
| Still available for DOS...
|
| https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detailfull/nationa...
| whazor wrote:
| I guess nowadays with Dosbox which even runs well on
| smartphones you could argue that DOS is quite portable.
| kingcharles wrote:
| > Still available for DOS...
|
| O_O
| xwdv wrote:
| Is it possible to get the reverse? Click a location and see where
| all the possible rain drops came from?
| irrational wrote:
| [clicks the pacific ocean]
| samlearner wrote:
| Working on adding some ability to view upstream paths, but
| there are a lot of complications with that and it would
| probably be limited to the US for now. That's the next major
| item on the to-do list, though.
| xwdv wrote:
| That would be incredibly useful!!!
| 988747 wrote:
| Maps are somewhat inaccurate. I tried my home town, and it routes
| through "unnamed river - 31km", before finding a river with the
| name (for the next 300km) - I know for the fact that this is one
| and the same river :)
|
| I wonder where apps like that source their map data.
| bs7280 wrote:
| This is great! But I did notice that when clicking in Chicago, it
| flows from the Chicago River into Lake Michigan, which is
| inaccurate. But to be fair, we did reverse the flow of the river
| around 100 years ago, which makes it one hell of an edge case.
| The subcontinental divide technically goes right up to the lock
| between Lake Michigan and the river.
| ragingrobot wrote:
| This is pretty cool. One thing is that it seems to get confused
| by nearby (smallish?) bodies of water. Near my house there's two
| creeks, they meet sort of forming a D shape. The traced path
| jumps across a small land mass once or twice between the creeks.
| Ultimately the drop would have ended up in the Raritan Bay
| regardless (although tool says Atlantic Ocean, I guess that's
| just me being pedantic) as the two creeks merge right before the
| mouth. Still, pretty cool.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| In some places in California's Central Valley, the rivers are
| usually dry, for much of the year; and even when there is water
| in them, the dry up at some point well before the maps says it
| does. Just sayin'
| samlearner wrote:
| Hey everyone, glad you all are enjoying the project!
|
| To address some of the points I'm seeing, it's not perfect right
| now, which is why we've considered this a beta release. In
| particular, there are some issues around name coverage abroad and
| around engineered features (dams, canals, etc.). A lot of known
| issues are documented at the top of this page:
| https://ksonda.github.io/global-river-runner/. Ultimately, we
| made as much progress as we could, including a lot of manual name
| suggestions before launching, and decided to publish the tool in
| beta, with an understanding that we'd take suggestions and
| otherwise work to improve the tool/data over time.
|
| To the points about the distance the paths are starting from a
| click, it does round coordinates to some extent. As much as I'd
| like to be more exact, we're stuck with a limited number of
| "flowlines" in our dataset and it will look for the closest one,
| which isn't always as close as we'd like. It's most useful for
| understanding watersheds in broad strokes, but often falls a
| little short when it comes to the novelty of literally tracing
| from your address.
|
| For both specificity and some of the canal issues, the US-only
| version of this tool is better than this one (https://river-
| runner.samlearner.com/) with the obvious limitation that the
| paths are only within the US.
|
| If you have any issues/feedback/suggestions regarding the UI and
| have a minute, would really appreciate if you're able to submit
| them as issues in the project repo on Github:
| https://github.com/sdl60660/river-runner If you're experiencing
| routing/naming issues, you can submit issues in this repo:
| https://github.com/ksonda/global-river-runner
|
| Again, thanks for giving the project a look! You can check out
| some of my other work here: https://www.samlearner.com/ or on my
| Github (https://github.com/sdl60660).
|
| I'd also like to shout out other other people who worked to make
| this happen: Dave Blodgett (https://github.com/dblodgett-usgs),
| Kyle Onda (https://github.com/ksonda), and Ben Webb
| (https://github.com/webb-ben).
| samwillis wrote:
| It seems to be missing some smaller rivers in the UK, where I
| live we have both the River Welland and River Gwash (technically
| a tributary to the River Welland), it completely misses the Gwash
| and always routs with the Welland (sometimes miles away) even if
| you click on it.
|
| It's quite interesting as the River Gwash both feeds and runs out
| of the Rutland Water which is the largest reservoir in England.
| Even if you click on Rutland Water the rout jumps about 10 mile
| to the south to the River Welland.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutland_Water
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Gwash
| globular-toast wrote:
| I dropped one in Cambridge and it took a pretty weird route
| through some fields instead of a much more direct route through
| drainage channels. I think it gets a little confused in the Fens
| because everything is basically at sea level.
| sparrish wrote:
| It stops too soon. Once it's in a gulf or ocean, where do those
| currents take it?
| hideo wrote:
| I feel like this line of questioning has the potential to get
| really philosophical really fast.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| From the liquid sea, it evaporates back to vapour, floats up
| into lower pressure, and forms clouds!
|
| And the clouds are in fact made of solid crystals of ice, which
| then melt to make rain.
|
| It's all a cycle, with many sizes of feedback loop. By loving
| our neighbour the ocean and picking up litter on the street, we
| can change it. The butterfly effect means that even a little
| helps.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution
|
| As a (possibly misheard) lyric, about clouds in the sea:
|
| Rhythm you have it or you don't
|
| That's a fallacy, I'm in them
|
| Every spiralling tree, every child of peace
|
| _Every cloud in the sea_ you see with your eyes
|
| Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood
|
| https://youtu.be/1V_xRb0x9aw?list=PLfNF8TQij08oma_987vYrzswd...
| fsflover wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27297689.
| a_shovel wrote:
| It looks like the whole length of the Chattahoochee River is
| labeled Apalachicola River, which only starts at Lake Seminole.
| Click the squiggly part of the Georgia-Alabama border to check.
| thomasgt wrote:
| Immediately visited Snow Dome on the Alberta/British Columbia
| border and was pleased to find that depending on where you click,
| you indeed get three very different answers:
|
| - https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com/?lng=-117.2588549...
|
| - https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com/?lng=-117.2130275...
|
| - https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com/?lng=-117.4424101...
| omnibrain wrote:
| It doesn't seem to work near drainage divides. It looks like it
| uses a point in the Municipality (the center?) and then looks
| from there for the nearest river.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| I doubt it does 8km in the Sahara like I tried haha
| graycat wrote:
| Uh, how about also pick a wet spot and see where its water came
| FROM??
| dmd wrote:
| Is there any way to force mapbox to precache tiles offscreen? I
| generally see a handful of tiles at the bottom ("closest") to me,
| and the rest of the screen is black.
| mikewarot wrote:
| My late friend's house in Oak Park, Illinois sat on the divide,
| rain on the east side ran to Lake Michigan, and then to the Saint
| Lawrence. Rain the west side, to the Calumet Sanitary Channel,
| the eventually down the Mississippi.
|
| I tried to find his house, but clicks run the animation before I
| can find it.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Hmm, did it where I live, on the side of a hill which goes to the
| brook at the bottom of the hill into a named river which starts
| about a mile away, that river flows into the Trent and out into
| the North Sea.
|
| The site instead thinks water flows a completely different
| direction eventually ending up in the River Severn
|
| That said it seems to start the trace from about 2 miles north
| from where I clicked, and that looks right based on that starting
| point. Didn't realise how close I was to the East-West watershed
| of the UK!
| nabla9 wrote:
| This seems to fail in many locations in Sahara. It gets going,
| then jumps to the nearest sea.
|
| Sahara has endorheic basins (aka closed or terminal basins)
| without outflow to sea.
| davidw wrote:
| It works in the endorheic basins in eastern Oregon pretty well.
| Although of course many of the "waterways" there are dry. It
| gets the paths correct, though.
| micro_cam wrote:
| Two Ocean Creek/Pass, Wyoming is another oddity it doesn't
| get right.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yep. Just tried near Frenchglen and it did not go to the sea.
| newman8r wrote:
| funny, that's the first thing I wanted to look at too. I
| tested it on the Salton Sea and Mono Lake and it was
| accurate.
|
| I didn't realize that Lake Tahoe drained to Pyramid Lake -
| pretty fun tool.
| [deleted]
| Random_Person wrote:
| I live in Northern WV and I'm fully aware that our rivers flow
| North, but for some reason, when I clicked on my area and saw the
| route run up to Pittsburgh before traveling South to the Gulf, I
| was taken aback.
| Thrymr wrote:
| Not sure how this works, but it seems to jump the Great Divide
| fairly frequently. E.g. a click on the Idaho side of the
| Bitterroots will show "Salmon, Idaho" as the start point, but
| jump to a stream in Montana that ends up in the Gulf of Mexico.
| Cool visualization, but does not seem to respect actual drainage
| basins at the start point.
| dragonsky wrote:
| This is very cool. Understand that you are constrained by the
| datasets you have available, but still very cool.
|
| Just wondering if it would be possible to reverse the track and
| plot out where a waterway is fed from? I understand this would be
| a lot more complex and computationally expensive, but when out on
| a waterway I always find it interesting to think about where the
| water I'm floating on came from.
|
| Again thanks for the work.
| giomasce wrote:
| Very nice tool! However, I think it is not always correct. For
| example, lake Trasimeno, in Italy, is endorheic (or maybe
| cryptorheic), but seems to discharge into river Arno from this
| website: https://river-runner-
| global.samlearner.com/?lng=12.098864773....
|
| I am pretty sure that path is not possible: it seems that the
| water would flow out of Trasimeno through the Anguillara torrent,
| but according to the Italian Wikipedia the torrent flows into the
| Trasimeno (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anguillara_(torrente)).
| According to the English Wikipedia it might be that Trasimeno has
| an outflowing canal, but that should flow into river Tevere
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Trasimeno), so their data is
| wrong anyway.
| whatsdoom wrote:
| This is really cool.
|
| Oddly it seems to get the wrong name for a river in my hometown.
| If I drop a pin in Columbus, OH it should flow into a creek or
| whatever, then the Scioto River and down to the Ohio. But the
| listing shows the Scioto as "Paint Creek." This misnaming of the
| Scioto River holds true as I head South and try in Circleville or
| Chillocothe. Still really neat!
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't recall what book I was reading that suggested than a
| civilization based on ecological awareness should be built around
| watersheds.
|
| Maybe half the borders in the world are ridge lines (a natural
| watershed boundary), while the rest are bodies of water. That
| means that the consequences of what goes into that water are
| split between me and perhaps 20 other states/nations. That sort
| of cross-border negotiation has a lot more friction involved with
| it.
|
| The watershed society would have jurisdictions nested around
| streams, tributaries, and rivers. I think if you sited your seats
| of power where your watershed meets the next higher jurisdiction,
| we probably would have a lot fewer industries running effluent
| pipes directly into our rivers, because the stuff the mayor is
| letting into their stream is running past the governor's house on
| its way to the president's.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| In Quebec we have such a delimitation for our main water
| conservation/protection agencies, AKA "organismes de bassins
| vesants" or OBV (I worked for two of them). That is, 40 NPOs
| that are mostly funded by the provincial environment ministry
| with a main mandate for surveillance and improvement of water
| quality, consultation/conciliation between stakeholders
| (government, municipalities, citizens and businesses). They're
| mostly small organizations with a good deal of autonomy beyond
| their main mandate as to the projects they launch or get
| involved in and help find funding/expertise for. It's a logical
| way of separating territories for water conservation across
| localized organizations.
|
| Map: https://robvq.qc.ca/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/11/20_carte_obv_...
| season2episode3 wrote:
| For the curious, here's a map of major watersheds in North
| America. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/watershed-map-north-
| americ...
| tehjoker wrote:
| It helps with awareness, but it's the structure of the
| interests that put them in power that create the pollution.
| Unfortunately the polluters help them get in power in the first
| place.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| While I'd like to think that, anecdotal there are places like
| Baton Rouge. Where the state capital building, mayor's house,
| and governor's mansion and smack dab in from of an refinery
| plant.
| simmanian wrote:
| One of my side project ideas is to implement something like this
| for money. That way individuals and groups can be more
| transparent about how they spend money.
| analog31 wrote:
| I have a hypothesis about health care, which is that the public
| health care systems are more efficient, simply because it's
| possible to find out where the money goes if it's all coming
| out of one checkbook. Our system is designed to hide the
| ultimate beneficiaries.
| ssully wrote:
| Pretty neat! Not the most accurate near Chicago. When the Des
| Plains and Chicago river run perpendicular the "rain drop" would
| skip over the Des Plains and into the Chicago river. Also it
| would flow toward Lake Michigan, which isn't typically the case.
| samlearner wrote:
| Yeah the tool struggles a lot with engineered features (dams,
| canals, etc.) and Chicago is really our quintessential example
| of this (issue documented a little here:
| https://ksonda.github.io/global-river-runner/). The US-only
| version of this tool (https://river-runner.samlearner.com/) is
| a lot better with the Chicago routes and is generally a little
| better with routes in the US.
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