Via James Fallows, a neat utility from Paul Rademacher helps you understand the scale of the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico by superimposing an image of the spill over a Google Earth shot of the metro area of your choice. Here’s the spill covering New York City, its New Jersey and Westchester suburbs, and also a nice swath of the Long Island Sound:
A number like 2500 square miles doesn’t mean much to most people intuitively. These images make a real impression.
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