[HN Gopher] River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, w...
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River Runner: drop a raindrop anywhere in the USA, watch where it
ends up
Author : prawn
Score : 770 points
Date : 2021-05-27 00:01 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (river-runner.samlearner.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (river-runner.samlearner.com)
| neovive wrote:
| Wow! Very cool use of Svelte JS.
| eganist wrote:
| Hm, I can no longer reproduce this, but my first click ended 22km
| away in a reservoir somewhere in the midwestern United States.
| Colorado maybe? But it wasn't Dillon; everything running into
| Dillon just passed through. I only mention it because I can't
| find any references to reservoirs acting as endorheic basins in
| the midwest.
| dkarl wrote:
| The Great Basin is interesting to explore. I clicked in Eureka,
| Utah, and the route ended 23km away in a tiny lake called Gadwall
| Pool.
| Urgo wrote:
| This is great! I got a chuckle though that this is for the US
| only, but it shows distance in km instead of miles. I'd love it
| if we changed to metric but I don't see that happening any time
| soon.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| It will happen if we keep making new things (like this tool)
| that use km instead of miles.
| samlearner wrote:
| That's the form the data came in and when it came time to
| convert it, I figured it might be better not to.
| mulmen wrote:
| The United States was one of the original signatories of the
| Metre Convention [1]. The metric system has been the foundation
| of all US measures since 1893 [2,3]. School children in the
| United States have learned both systems for decades. Ford
| trucks have metric bolts. The _US military_ uses the metric
| system.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...
|
| [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendenhall_Order
| foota wrote:
| I chose a spot in Colorado, the result was rather disappointing:
| https://river-runner.samlearner.com/?lng=-105.56967021444078...
| graderjs wrote:
| It's pretty nuts to me that a raindrop that falls in Crow Agency,
| Montana will drain into the Gulf of Mexico!!! :p :) xx
| Infernal wrote:
| I wonder how long that journey takes? Assuming no evaporation
| of our sample drop.
| kempbellt wrote:
| Napkin math.
|
| Longest run I've seen (posted in another comment above)
| starting in NW Montana: https://river-
| runner.samlearner.com/?lng=-113.26136901231438...
|
| 5570 km (3461 miles)
|
| Rivers fluctuate between 3 to 15 mph on average (quick
| Googling).
|
| At an average of 3mph: ~48 days
|
| 15mph: ~9.6 days
|
| 7mph: ~20.6 days
|
| I'm sure the time of year you decide to run the experiment
| would change the results pretty drastically.
| Arcane_NH wrote:
| Request for enhancement. Add the flow of the Great Lakes.
| Modeling Lake Michigan near Chicago may be difficult, but
| everything else should eventually flow over Niagara Falls and
| through the St. Lawrence into the Atlantic.
| celim307 wrote:
| Wow I clicked thinking the concept was neat enough on its own but
| the execution was engaging and informative. This is great
| dboreham wrote:
| There's a small part of North Dakota (and a teeny part of
| Montana) that drain into Hudson Bay. This led to the odd fact
| that these parts of the Midwest USA were for a while British
| territory (until 1818).
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pembina_Region
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Which part is that? I can't find it on the map. Just want to
| see the twisty windy path.
| foota wrote:
| I think it must be northern?
| dboreham wrote:
| Yes, anywhere that drains to the Red River, which flows
| north. The Louisiana Purchase you'll recall only covers
| land that drains into the Mississippi.
| mastax wrote:
| Northeastern North Dakota. The website just shows it stopping
| at Canada since it's based on USGS data.
| dboreham wrote:
| See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkirk_Concession
|
| And in Montana it's Triple Divide Peak
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Divide_Peak_(Montana)
| mikewarot wrote:
| A friend of mine has a house set on one of the boundaries, the
| west half of his roof empties into the Mississippi, the east half
| into Lake Michigan.
| analog31 wrote:
| Waukesha?
|
| It's actually an interesting regional issue, because the
| allocation of Great Lakes water is ultimately governed by a
| treaty with Canada. Taking water out of the Great Lakes
| watershed is prohibited without being granted by an exception.
|
| This became a local issue in Waukesha, because the town is on
| the boundary, so they have two water systems, and the one on
| the Mississippi side got contaminated. They eventually got
| permission to connect the whole town to the Lake Michigan side,
| by agreeing to return all of the drain water back to that side.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| That is pretty cool to visualize in your head
| tigerlily wrote:
| He could call his house "the Watershed".
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Wow. Place a drop in central Wyoming, watch that one!
| ageofwant wrote:
| Great piece of work. But what struck me the most is how little of
| the real America is left. Everything is basically covered by
| plowed-under farmland. All it takes is Google earth and a bit
| sensitivity to what you are looking at. Humanity has really left
| a giant scar on the face of the earth.
| rsfinn wrote:
| This is a lot of fun. As a resident of Maryland, I was mildly
| surprised to find that the Chesapeake Bay is treated as part of
| the Atlantic Ocean, instead of an individual waterway in its own
| right. I suppose this is probably due to the underlying data set,
| but it doesn't seem right to me.
| samlearner wrote:
| This has been added a stopping feature as of the last update.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Yeah, ecologically the Chesapeake is very distinct.
| samlearner wrote:
| You're the second person to mention this now! The stopping
| feature stuff is very tricky and not in the original USGS data,
| but I can block out Chesapeake Bay the same way that I blocked
| or the Gulf of Mexico
| howzitallworkeh wrote:
| Cool project - and I like that it uses USGS hydrography data.
|
| They publish all kinds of terrain survey information about the
| entire USA for free. There's probably enough data to make your
| own GPS mapping device/app.
|
| https://www.usgs.gov/products/maps/gis-data
| jubjubbird wrote:
| And here's a USGS site that delineates a watershed from any
| point on a stream:
|
| https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/s...
| NortySpock wrote:
| Fun, even shows you the short rivers that drain into the Great
| Salt Lake of Utah
| riazrizvi wrote:
| I think you'll get more traction with this if you speed up the
| analysis. Probably easiest done by determining an interpolation
| grid, fill it with values, and return nearest neighbor as the
| result.
|
| Strictly speaking it could still be just as accurate as the
| uninterpolated approach, since when a raindrop falls, winds could
| place the drop on the ground some distance away from its release
| point.
| slacktide wrote:
| Allow me to present Triple Divide Peak, from whence you may
| urinate simultaneously into the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic
| oceans.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Divide_Peak_(Montana)
| bostonsre wrote:
| Neat.. I was just in that park last week for a wedding, it was
| too bad that a lot of the roads were still closed, but it was
| still amazingly beautiful. Think I've driven over the
| continental divide about 6 times in the past week, the one east
| of glacier national park twice and three times when driving
| through yellowstone to get to teton national forest today. It's
| just ridiculous up here.
| scottndecker wrote:
| This is outstanding. Great job. Can't wait to show the kids when
| they wake up to better explain the continental divide here in
| Colorado.
| hirundo wrote:
| I live near the Continental Divide. I dropped a drop in Datil,
| NM, which is a few miles east of the divide, and it went west.
| But isn't the Continental Divide defined as the line at which
| water drains east or west? Is the app mistaken, is my definition
| wrong, or what?
| umanwizard wrote:
| I guess check and see which way the water flows next time you
| get a big rainstorm :)
| macksd wrote:
| There are multiple places where the divide forks and then joins
| back together, and even then there are other exceptions. If you
| live near it, I wouldn't visualize it as a single point, but as
| a general shift in overall trends.
| thoughtpeddler wrote:
| This is so cool. Wow. Thank you for building this!
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| Pretty nice. I know the hydrology of my area pretty well. I'm not
| sure if they're using USGS hydrology maps because a water droplet
| on either side of two water sheds flows to the nearest river by
| distance, not how things actually flow, but it's pretty close.
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| Saw some "BLM" forests along the The Tongue River. For the
| curious that's acronym for "Bureau of Land Management".
| zanethomas wrote:
| cool
| mnw21cam wrote:
| I can't see anyone else commenting this here yet - I just get a
| blank white screen, both on Firefox and Chromium. And no, I
| haven't disabled Javascript for it. Any ideas?
| perrohunter wrote:
| this is brilliant
| davidw wrote:
| Having it always start with a 'city' is a bit weird in places in
| the west. I tested it east of Lake Abert in Oregon and it calls
| it 'Lakeview'. The random location is easily an hour drive from
| Lakeview.
|
| For a scenic trip, start it near the 'headwaters' of the Owyhee
| river in SE Oregon, SW Idaho or Northern Nevada, which gets you
| the Owyhee, Snake and Columbia rivers.
| sschueller wrote:
| Cool but doesn't a large amount get absorbed and end up in ground
| water pools etc?
| yaitsyaboi wrote:
| Yes and some evaporates, but I think the tool is mapping the
| path of water that doesn't leave the water system that way and
| flows out into a larger body.
| cush wrote:
| Water goes through the water cycle. Even if it's absorbed by
| the ground, it eventually leads to collection, evaporation, and
| precipitation again.
|
| If most of the water collected in underground pools, then
| eventually we'd have no oceans.
| williesleg wrote:
| Amazing but wrong. Most water goes down into the earth. Fucking
| waste of time.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Really nice work. However, I would really love to have a no
| animation option. Just show me the route from the continental
| view. I pretty much have to reload to get it back to the starting
| point reliably. Fun to click into the animation, but not every
| time. Thanks for putting this up!
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| +1 for the no-animation option. It takes me at least 10 seconds
| between each attempt.
|
| Love the visualization!
| vmception wrote:
| Accolades!
|
| Since no one else has done it I will ask for features: sometimes
| it takes a while for it to determine the route, there is no way
| to cancel that to go back to trying a new raindrop location
|
| Wish there was a different way to get back to raindrop location
| instead of closing the existing route. Would prefer some kind of
| click/tap-state or gesture. More easily noticeable of an
| inconvenience on an ultrawide screen.
| chinathrow wrote:
| I love it. Another feature request would be to not fly the path
| but just show the plotted flow.
| samlearner wrote:
| I struggled with this a lot. Originally set that ending
| overview at the beginning, but was worried that practically a
| lot of users might miss the main feature. I've heard from a
| lot of people that they were surprised it went into the 3D
| view, and I think some people might see the plot and just
| assume that's it.
| leoedin wrote:
| The 3D view is cool, but it would be great if you could
| turn it off. After a few goes, all I wanted to do was
| quickly look at a bunch of different places - I ended up
| closing the 3D view and going back to the map view anyway.
| samlearner wrote:
| Hmm ok, there's a fix here and it's probably something to
| do with a timer and a way to opt out, I'll work on this.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| You can cancel the animation part by clicking the close
| button on the top right panel.
| fillskills wrote:
| This is simply amazing. I expect to spend hours on this with the
| kids. Thanks!
| dvt wrote:
| This is amazing, outstanding project! Interestingly, I got it
| "stuck" when I clicked somewhere random in California (Pope
| Valley, apparently): https://i.imgur.com/deOsIt2.png
| jacquesm wrote:
| Is there a lake there in real life?
| samlearner wrote:
| This should be fixed now!
| truculent wrote:
| Is that within The Great Basin[^1]?
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watersheds_of_North_America
| mannykannot wrote:
| The path, having almost reached the mouth of the Sacramento
| River, seems to have been captured by the very artificial
| Mallard Reservoir in Concord, Contra Costa. As to be expected,
| it seems that anything draining into the Sacramento will do the
| same.
|
| https://goo.gl/maps/s9Gep775ZLDgddzz7
| MetallicCloud wrote:
| One thing which I suppose isn't surprising, but still was amazing
| to see at scale, is I put a drop in Colorado that ended up in the
| Gulf of Mexico. As the camera followed the path, it's nothing but
| farms, with the odd city sprinkled in. I got bored and left in
| Nebraska, but I imagine it's like that the whole way.
|
| It's obvious it takes a lot of land to feed everyone, but to see
| it like that really drove it home.
| mason55 wrote:
| Another neat thing about the eastern half of Colorado is the
| division between the Platte/Missouri and the Arkansas. A small
| difference in starting point has a huge impact on the route you
| travel to get to the Mississippi.
| cpascal wrote:
| Depending on where you placed that drop in Colorado it also
| could've ended up in the Pacific. The continental divide is in
| Colorado and all water west of the divide will eventually drain
| into the Pacific and all water east will drain to the Atlantic.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Divide_of_the_Amer...
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The Great Basin is an endorheic basin (no outflow) located
| west of the Rockies, so not quite all the water.
|
| From Wikipedia: " The hydrographic Great Basin is a
| 209,162-square-mile (541,730 km2) area that drains
| internally. All precipitation in the region evaporates, sinks
| underground or flows into lakes (mostly saline). As observed
| by Fremont, creeks, streams, or rivers find no outlet to
| either the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean. "
| mikeurbach wrote:
| I've been enjoying placing a drop right along the divide and
| seeing which way it goes. For example, up near Lenawee
| Mountain (aka A-basin). I've also noticed that up there,
| sometimes there is no route to either ocean. I guess it ends
| up in a high-alpine catchment and stays on the divide.
| garborg wrote:
| Another fun, if more subtle divide is right around Hibbing,
| MN -- step west and water flows down the Mississippi to the
| Gulf of Mexico, step north and water flows up to Hudson Bay,
| step southeast and water flows through the Great Lakes to the
| Atlantic Ocean.
| https://www.google.com/maps/@47.4206243,-93.0430116,12.7z
| spideymans wrote:
| This has to be one of the coolest things I've seen on HN :)
| chrisMyzel wrote:
| Beautiful idea - unfortunately it does load forever for the
| calculation to compelete on the website(at the moment). Found out
| about the city of Sibley, Minnesota now by Wikipedia and it seems
| pretty flat xD
| [deleted]
| bernardv wrote:
| Very nicely done. What would be cool is the ability to switch
| from the terrain view to one showing height contours. Is overland
| runoff path hydrologically correct or are you essentially
| following stream flow. In any case, this would be a great exhibit
| in a first hydrology class.
| thinker5555 wrote:
| That's was pretty cool.
|
| I had a weird thing going on at first where the map data seemed
| really old, especially when I was at about "city" level.
| Interchanges and neighborhoods that I know that have been there
| since at least 2002 were nowhere to be found. It wasn't until I
| zoomed way in and then back out again did the map change and they
| showed up.
| macksd wrote:
| This really illustrates to me how important the artificially
| colored overlays are. As river names change, I assume the river
| I'm tracking is merging with a larger river. And yet even when I
| know it's coming, I'm really struggling to spot the other river
| before we merge.
| fouc wrote:
| Unconsciously I expected that the drop would always end up in
| larger bodies of water. So I was surprised when it went from a
| creek to a river and to a lake, and then back to a creek. We're
| probably missing some groundwater visualization :)
| relaxing wrote:
| It could have been an endorheic basin, where the next step
| would be evaporation.
| davidw wrote:
| The Great Basin area is the first thing I checked, to see if
| that worked well, and it does.
| toss1 wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| Is there a way to put down a grid of raindrops in an area and
| display their paths from above? It'd be a great way to visualize
| watersheds.
|
| Another (probably huge?) enhancement might be to calculate and
| display typical travel times along those routes.
|
| Nice work - keep it up!
| Dah00n wrote:
| Palisade, Minnesota to Gulf of Mexico is quite the trip!
| mec31 wrote:
| Cut Bank, Montana to Gulf of Mexico is also quite a ride!
| boringg wrote:
| No clue one the true value of this aside from scratching an
| interest. Either way very cool.
| Lendal wrote:
| Educational. The thing that strikes me is that the reasons why
| we're in an extinction event are not what most people think. I
| used to think it was due to cities or suburban sprawl. Not
| true. This tool shows it's farmland. A high percentage of the
| land you pass through on this tool is farmland. There are no
| wilderness areas anymore.
| boringg wrote:
| Thats true however the reason we have a lot of farmland is to
| feed people in the cities. It's a collective system that is
| putting pressure everywhere on all of the global resources...
| kpt wrote:
| This is cool, i like this, its made my lunch
|
| - A Brit
| gregors wrote:
| Very cool stuff! I saw talk regarding a similar idea several
| years back at Strangeloop - check it out!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4z-uSMhvVM
| dboreham wrote:
| It says my lawn is 5230km from the Gulf of Mexico. Not quite the
| furthest you can go though -- that's 200km east of here, I think.
| pokot0 wrote:
| Very cool! Now let's find 2 drops, no more than 1 meter apart,
| one going to the atlantic, the other on the pacific.
| mosseater wrote:
| Error code on your page! Oh no. Looks like you hit some limit on
| vercel
| nycdatasci wrote:
| I was curious to see what happens to rain in Death Valley (below
| sea level). https://river-
| runner.samlearner.com/?lng=-116.84629411503326...
| rafael_benatti wrote:
| I'm not a programmer, but as an environmental engineering student
| that was an astonishing work. Congratulations :)
| sleavey wrote:
| Is the map loading initially ok then suddenly distorting to
| become unreadable after a second or two for anyone else? I'm on
| Firefox, with lots of about:config hacking, particularly
| preventing canvas being used for fingerprinting, so the website
| maybe can't handle unavailability of certain features.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Allow "extract canvas data". It breaks a lot of graphics
| visualizations within FF.
| vesinisa wrote:
| For me this worked on Firefox without issue.
| Black101 wrote:
| Yes, it looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/3ec9zpj.jpg ... I
| don't have a whole lot of custom about:config settings and I
| tried to disable no-script and ublock origin but no luck.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Allow "extract canvas data". It breaks a lot of graphics
| visualizations within FF.
| asymmetric wrote:
| Same setup, lots of weird glitches.
| codingdave wrote:
| At a high level, I really like this. Some UX concerns are all
| that stop it from being amazing:
|
| - The mouse should be a pointer, not a hand. Not only is that the
| expectation when an element is interactive, but it helps with
| precision clicking.
|
| - The map almost made me sick when it starting moving. It needs
| to be slower and smoother. You already let people speed it up,
| but start slower.
|
| - Dragging the map should be possible. I wanted to scroll back to
| something that had moved off-screen, and the map dragged a few
| pixels, then snapped back. If it is supposed to be draggable, let
| it drag. If not, don't let a drag start and then snap it back.
|
| But really, those concerns aside, this is a nice tool.
| samlearner wrote:
| Hey, thanks for the feedback. I actually struggled on what to
| do with the cursor, since the map is draggable (when not at min
| zoom level) prior to a click and the default mapbox cursor is
| denoting that. On balance, I think you're right that a default
| cursor might be better.
|
| Re: interaction during the run, I thought about allowing you to
| interact and just pausing the run while you do, but thought
| that too many people would interact accidentally, pause the run
| and then not understand that they had to click somewhere to
| resume. It's a feature that would technically be ideal, but
| practically would throw a lot of people off-track with
| incidental interaction I think (I had this same issue with the
| decision to start the run right away instead of giving the user
| and overview at the beginning. Technically, I think it would be
| ideal, practically, I think a lot of people could miss the main
| feature of the site altogether).
|
| Speed-wise, I've already slowed it down a good amount from the
| original iteration, if you can believe that, but I could take
| it down a little more. There's a weird kind of balance in
| perceptual speed between camera height and true speed, so I've
| tried to not give a user full control over speed/zoom, because
| most options are very bad. I can, at least, take the base speed
| down a little, and maybe give more precise speed control than
| what's there. Fundamentally, though, I don't want the default
| setting to take ten minutes for a run, and I also want you to
| really be able to see the mountains and canyons.
| tantalor wrote:
| Google Maps uses pointer by default and "move" when dragging.
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/cursor
| caf wrote:
| You could make it pause the run when moving the map around,
| the automatically continue if it's left alone for N seconds,
| where N is probably around 5.
| MKinley wrote:
| Just wanted to say thank you for this tool! I hope you keep
| it online as I want to use this for my kids as they grow up
| to teach them this when they reach it in school.
|
| Also, as it stands right now as of this post I found the UI
| to be fine, the speed was decent and did a good job of
| following the path without taking too long or being too fast,
| I think its at a good balance right now.
| beached_whale wrote:
| I remember seeing tools like this in the past, used by
| governments for flood modelling and other activities, but one of
| the interesting things at the time(not sure about now) was that
| the elevation data wasn't granular enough in some cases water
| went uphill. Still good for modelling but you needed humans to
| interpret.
| shireboy wrote:
| Really neat tool. Reminds me of a favorite quote:
|
| Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through
| it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over
| rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are
| timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of
| the words are theirs. - A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean
| [deleted]
| flakiness wrote:
| Very cool, and feel more real than I expected. A raindrop often
| ends up to the real "river" and goes down to the sea with it. It
| revived my appreciation to the physics.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| Really impressive!
|
| Feature suggestion 1: Maybe you could pre-render a grid of rain
| drops to get a nice overview of the flow paths and how they
| converge. Would be cool and interesting.
|
| Feature suggestion 2: It might be possible to include man-made
| structures along the path, and to include a small delay when the
| water is halted by dams/power stations/whatevers.
| potatosalad1 wrote:
| This is very cool. It would be nice if it showed how long the
| path is, so you could play a mini game to try and find the
| longest path.
| pianom4n wrote:
| It shows the total length in the top right corner.
| kcvv wrote:
| It would be an interesting problem to see / solve where in this
| map would a drop travel the most. By just clicking, I got one
| that travels from Cavour, South Dakota to Gulf of Mexico over a
| 3523 Kms journey. I am sure there must be something that is
| longer!
|
| Edit - some of the routes stop at border of Canada - is this due
| to lack of dataset?
| Sharlin wrote:
| The longest route in this dataset is almost certainly from
| Northwest Montana to the Gulf of Mexico; see, eg. the beautiful
| illustration of watersheds in North America at [1]. Example:
| [2]
|
| [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/maps-worlds-watersheds/
|
| [2] https://river-
| runner.samlearner.com/?lng=-113.26136901231438...
| carl_dr wrote:
| The source of the Missouri River - Brower's Spring apparently -
| is probably close to the point where it's longest. I can't find
| it exactly on this map, but have got up to 5790km, from a point
| just by Yellowstone Airport.
|
| The code is at https://github.com/sdl60660/river-runner/, it
| would be quite possible to base a solver on that.
| samlearner wrote:
| Ha I appreciate you sharing the repo, but if someone is
| interested in finding a longest route, they should probably
| just go straight to the data source (USGS NHDPlus data/NLDI
| API)
| TimonKnigge wrote:
| You can click in Northern Montana for longer routes, e.g.
| Browning, Montana gives about 5587km.
| kcvv wrote:
| This is cool! Did you have some info on this or use some data
| to find this? I was randomly clicking points on center of US
| and many were just ending in a nearby lake. I only found a
| few that ended up in the sea..
| dmd wrote:
| What does it mean when it says "Unable to find a flow path for
| [city, state]"? I've gotten this a few times in New Mexico.
| davidw wrote:
| It means the drop hits the ground and evaporates or soaks into
| the sand, I guess?
| homero wrote:
| That's cool. I didn't know MapBox had 3D like Google Earth
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| I'd love to see something like this for the rest of the world
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(page generated 2021-05-27 23:02 UTC)