MEDIUM: Map/Data Visualization
DESCRIPTION:
This map product is a combination of three geovisualizations about historical hurricanes in the contiguous U.S. from different perspectives: the Panoramic “Hexagon” Map (bottom), the “Concentric Ring” Map (top-left), and the “Historic Hurricane Tracks” Map (top-right).
ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
1) The Panoramic “Hexagon” Map (bottom):
With the orthographic “World From Space” projection, this map lines up the major Atlantic coastal area of the U.S. horizontally. Based on a 10-square-kilometer hexagon unit, the choropleth (color) shows the total number of storms, and the piled bar chart (length) shows the storm frequencies in the recent 10, 20, 50, 100, and 171 (all accessible history) years, respectively.
2) The “Concentric Ring” Map (top-left):
With the same universal unit as the bottom map (10-sq-km hexagon), this map uses concentric rings to compare the number of storm events every decade in the past 50 years: i.e., the center (core) indicates the oldest decade (1970s) and the edge ring indicates the most recent one (2010s). The darker the ring color is, the more storms this hexagon statistical unit has witnessed.
3) The “Historic Hurricane Tracks” Map (top-right):
With all the hurricane tracks’ intensity displayed in different color-width combination, the storm category is intuitively visualized at corresponding location. Storms in recent 20 years have full opacity, and various transparency is applied according to its year, imitating the fading out history. As for the label typography, black text indicates storms in recent 20 years, aligned on the right side of coast; grayer text indicates storms earlier, aligned on the left side of coast; and additionally, bold text illustrates major hurricanes (category-3 and above). The storm’s year is added to the bracket after the name, while some historic storms even do not have a name.