[HN Gopher] Watch the path of a raindrop from anywhere in the world
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Watch the path of a raindrop from anywhere in the world
Author : kawera
Score : 165 points
Date : 2025-01-26 11:09 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (river-runner-global.samlearner.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (river-runner-global.samlearner.com)
| tetris11 wrote:
| If you drop a pin anywhere in south london, it takes several
| "unknown river"s which on the map are stated clearly as the River
| Wandle.
|
| The US drops seemed a lot cleaner
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Same with British Columbia, Canada. There are a lot of
| unidentified waterways. In Victoria, BC, virtually everything
| ends up going down a small inlet called "the gorge". It's not
| quite correct to consider it a stream, river, creek, etc.
|
| Still a really cool idea, and when it works well it's good fun.
| I can see there being great practical applications if it was
| more accurate too (though I'm sure the people who could put it
| to use already have good data)
| brazzy wrote:
| The river Isar through Munich, Germany, which is one of the
| larger tributaries of the mighty Danube, is also "unknown". The
| data outside the USA is definitely lacking in that regard.
|
| I guess the names are taken from an underlying hydrologic
| dataset, and Google (or whoever) maps used purely for
| visualization.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| Posted just a few months ago, the comments point to prior
| postings in last five years.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41752052
| johann8384 wrote:
| So?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Dupe?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Not with only three comments and two votes, which is well
| below the "significant discussion" threshold.
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9416150>
| darth_avocado wrote:
| There has been significant discussion like the
| grandparent points out?
|
| 2022 (790 points, 115 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29841737 2021 (887
| points, 128 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27297689
| dredmorbius wrote:
| HN's rules on dupes:
|
| - No reposts within a year, unless ...
|
| - Posts within the past year have not had "significant
| discussion", a value left provocatively vague by dang,
| but I figure as roughly >= 20 comments.
|
| Reposts _after_ 12 months or if there 's been no
| significant discussion _within_ the past 12 months are
| both perfectly OK.
|
| You're welcome and encouraged to read the guidelines and
| FAQ (both linked on every HN thread and comment page)
| and/or see dang's many, many, many previous comments on
| this topic:
|
| <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=fals
| e&qu...>
| 0x1ceb00da wrote:
| Doesn't account for lakes
| decatur wrote:
| Dropped into Gulf of Mexico. Response: Finding downstream path
| from Unknown Territory
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It does that for all ocean.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| I believe we call that the Gulf of Authority now.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| The Gulf between the Two Ears.
| bagels wrote:
| It doesn't work for me, but I'm going to assume the model does
| not include evaporation or ground water?
| imyerf wrote:
| broken now, just spins
| ninju wrote:
| HN Hug of Death :-)
| fourteenfour wrote:
| If you just want to look in the US, their other similar project
| seems to be working OK. https://river-runner.samlearner.com/
| psunavy03 wrote:
| "Unable to find a flowpath from that location, try something
| else." And that's most of greater Seattle.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| My favorite fact about raindrop paths/watersheds is that they
| determine most of the political boundary between Argentina and
| Chile. If the rain at a point ultimately flows to the Pacific
| Ocean, that point is in Chile; if it flows to the Atlantic Ocean,
| it is in Argentina. This is article 1 of the original boundary
| treaty [0] from the 19th century.
|
| The treaty was made before the Andes were fully explored, and so
| it doesn't handle some interesting edges cases like the Southern
| Patagonian Ice Field. The field has the property that when rain
| falls there, it freezes and goes nowhere!
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_Treaty_of_1881_betwee...
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Patagonian_Ice_Field
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Watersheds and rivers are _often_ key determinants of pre-
| industrial borders, if only because they served (variously) as
| obstacles (wide, fast rivers) and facilitators (narrow / slow)
| to navigation. Until the development of steam-driven railroads
| and internal-combustion-driven vehicles, if you wanted to move
| any considerable quantity of goods or people, your best option
| was a ship over either a (reasonably) calm sea, or inland
| rivers, lakes, and canals. Ice ran a close second, and ice
| roads remain vital transport routes in Siberia and Alaska.
| Where run over rivers and lakes, those tend to be (near) level
| terrain, and frictional losses are minimised.
|
| China built over 1,000 km of canals _1,000 to 2,000 years ago_.
| Inland travel within England and Great Britain was
| revolutionised by the development of canals. The US opened up
| its interior with the Erie Canal, on which a single mule could
| haul an 80-foot barge laden with 40 tonnes of goods or people.
| Not only was the travel _efficient_ (in terms of motive power
| and drovers) but it was _comfortable_. A four-foot-deep ditch
| (the Erie Canal) was immune to the rutting and mud of a road,
| and though the _speed_ of travel was low, in a matter of a few
| days people could travel _in great comfort_ across New York
| from the Hudson to Lake Erie and from there to points inland
| via the Great Lakes, Chicago, and Mississippi / Missouri /
| Ohio / Red, and other, rivers.
|
| I'd realised the political boundaries aspect looking at a map
| of European watersheds created by Robert Szucs:
|
| <https://www.seattlepi.com/local/science/article/Viral-
| maps-s...>
|
| (Europe is in the carousel at the top, third image, isolated
| here:
| <https://s.hdnux.com/photos/54/21/22/11605137/3/960x0.webp>)
|
| It's not that national borders are specifically identified as
| watersheds, but _in large part_ you can patch together current
| state boundaries out of watersheds and rivers, or find internal
| divisions (e.g., UK counties, German states, French provinces)
| out of watersheds.
|
| In regions in which borders were more arbitrarily assigned, as
| with the inland US, Middle East (o hai Sykes-Picot), and
| Africa, the _artificiality_ of imposed borders is highly
| evident, though regional affiliations become clearer.
|
| South American countries are, as you note, more closely aligned
| with watersheds. It's also more evident why the north-eastern
| region of South America is so politically divided: it's largely
| composed of non-contiguous watersheds which have become their
| own polities.
|
| <https://s.hdnux.com/photos/54/21/22/11605136/4/960x0.webp>
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > obstacles (wide, fast rivers) and facilitators (narrow /
| slow) to navigation
|
| Wide rivers are slow. Narrow rivers are fast. That is the
| nature of fluid dynamics.
|
| Wide rivers are obstacles to movement on the land and
| facilitators of movement on the water; narrow rivers are
| worse at both of those things.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I could have been clearer that both descriptions were meant
| to be _or_ statements.
|
| Fast rivers _or_ wide rivers are challenging, the former as
| they 're inherently treacherous, the latter as they're
| difficult to bridge.
|
| Narrow rivers can be bridged. Slow rivers can be traversed
| by boats, ships, barges, etc.
|
| Yes, wide rivers _tend_ to be slow, and narrow rivers
| _tend_ to be fast, all else constant, but all else is
| rarely constant such that there are narrow slow rivers and
| wide fast / treacherous ones.
| jmilloy wrote:
| I think borders based on watersheds make so much more sense
| than those on rivers, both of which are common.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Either seem better than arbitrary lines
| emmelaich wrote:
| Harder to find though.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The big bit of a river is easy to find, sure.
|
| But up near the source where it splits into thousands of
| small tributaries which move and change a lot? That's a
| recipe for boundary disputes.
|
| Whereas a watershed rarely changes far, even on geological
| timescales.
| jajko wrote:
| Even glaciers flow, otherwise they would over time become as
| thick as cloud layer that provides that rain drop or snow
| flake. Its just that speed of flow is... glacial.
|
| 1 year on glacier, once snow is compressed into ice which takes
| few years, is represented by maybe 1-2m layer in European Alps.
|
| Thats why glaciers have crevasses - they bend as valleys flow
| (or over some hard bottom bumps that weren't grinded flat yet),
| and it cracks at those bends. Just like say chocolate on
| surface of cold Snickers bar if you try same bending
| brazzy wrote:
| And there was a man named Francisco Moreno who explored the
| area and was able to use his knowledge to resolve border
| disputes about some of those edge cases in favor of Argentina,
| making him something of a national hero. Argentina's most
| famous glacier is named after him:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perito_Moreno_Glacier
| gus_massa wrote:
| It was later amended to consider the top of the mountains that
| define the watersheds. Watersheds are difficult to determine
| and may change from time to time. Mountaintops are easier to
| determine and more permanent.
| vekatimest wrote:
| Backend seems to be unresponsive currently.
| ch33zer wrote:
| Tangentially related are lakes that flow out to two different
| oceans. Lake Isa in Yellowstone
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isa_Lake) is an example. Even
| more interesting the different sides of the lake flow to the
| 'wrong' oceans: the eastern side of the lake flows to the Pacific
| and the western to the Gulf of Mexico.
| restlessdesign wrote:
| Neat!
| notcrazylol wrote:
| Damn this is soo cool! I tried it at a random place and it worked
| like magic! But when I tried it near my house, the website broke
| :D I think it doesn't handle unidentified rivers.
| martini333 wrote:
| First try ends up in something called "Gulf of Mexico", what is
| that?
| quicklime wrote:
| A place in Oceania. Might be called something else in Newspeak
| though.
| pmontra wrote:
| The animation is cool but I'd like a way to disable it and just
| be able to see the path on the globe, then tap to another place
| and see that other path too. It would be OK to reload the page to
| clean all paths. No need to have a way to share them if there are
| more than one path.
| kaskakokos wrote:
| I tested it on a peak we have in Spain called 'Pico Tres Mares,'
| which translates to 'Three Seas Peak,' and it was nice to see
| that depending on which side you drop the raindrop, the water
| flows to the Bay of Biscay, the Atlantic, or the Mediterranean.
|
| Nice.
| stewarts wrote:
| Very similar named peak in Glacier National Park - Triple Peak
| Divide. Water can flow to the Pacific, Atlantic, or Arctic
| oceans.
| longbrass wrote:
| Timbuktu in Mali only travels 444 km!
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(page generated 2025-01-29 23:02 UTC)