Snowfall amounts
By The Weathercarrot
on the Appalachian Trail
July 4, 2003
I just wanted to let you all know that my Appalachian Trail mapping project of average annual snowfall is finally complete and is now ready for viewing on the Internet. Please feel free to check it out. This is a project I started planning and researching more than 10 years ago and have spent the last two and a half years producing. Originally intended as something I just wanted to create for myself, the general quality has risen to a level that has made me want to make it available for anyone to see. Even for those not especially interested in the depiction of snowfall along the trail, these maps have also appealed to people with interests in art, physical geography, climate/weather, Appalachian geography, the A.T. in general, and to those who are just into maps.
The front page of the site takes some time to load — some patience may be required. We decided to try out image titles instead of text because it looks so much better, but it has it’s time-consuming downside. The good part is that once it’s on it can stay there because everything else opens in a new window. If there is enough negative feedback about load time, we may switch it to text. Regarding the site content — there are also some background items, including a detailed description and history of the project, “behind-the-scenes” photos, a full list of data sources, including links to the associated Web sites, and a page for selected trail and climate/weather related links. Every map on the site appears in two formats. The first one you get is the screen size version. This gives you a good overview of the whole map. You can then click on a link below to see a zoomed-in, larger version that will allow you to clearly see every small detail of the map. There had been some ideas previously to have it more interactive, with extensive zoom-in and zoom-out capabilities, but I think this is simpler and very effective. Internet Explorer users: some things here to keep in mind — The large versions of the maps, as well as the enlarged pictures in “Project Photos” are often reduced to screen size by the browser after loading. To see the correct size, you then have to hold the curser over the image, find the little orange and blue icon (lower right corner) and click on it. Several people who saw the test version of the site were not aware of this feature and did not see the correct size images until they were told of it afterward. So it may not be quite that obvious. Additionally, the two map versions (which will be in their own windows) are best seen in the full screen setting (F11). If you like what you see and you have your own Web site, you are definitely invited to include a link to this site. If you do that, please let me know (just so I can have an idea of where this all goes). In addition, everyone is encouraged to share these with others, to copy and save the images, send them elsewhere, or just point people in this direction. This is something that I want to share with others for free and have no intention to sell it or use it for any other commercial-type purposes. I’m hoping they will soon be available in a higher resolution form, which would make a printed version higher in quality. This form would exist either through an FTP site (which could then be downloaded) and/or on CD. In both cases it would still be free, and I can only see the possibility of money changing hands in a postage/cost situation for a blank CD. Regarding the whole copyright issue, I would just ask that if these maps are used elsewhere, please mention where they came from. So, here is the link to the A.T. snowmaps site:
http://friends.backcountry.net/snowmaps I hope you will enjoy this. For me it has definitely been quite an experience to create. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks, ~ ... W E A T H E R C A R R O T
