GE Post-Dollar Fire Imagery for Mount Hood!

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Splintercat
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GE Post-Dollar Fire Imagery for Mount Hood!

Post by Splintercat » May 1st, 2016, 9:56 am

Finally! New post-Dollar Fire imagery is available for Mount Hood. It's not ideal -- shot March 31 of this year, so lots of snow and very contrasty with some funky color banding, but at least it's a step into the post-fire era. Here's a shot looking over the crest of Owl Point as a sample:

Image

Tom

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adamschneider
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Re: GE Post-Dollar Fire Imagery for Mount Hood!

Post by adamschneider » May 1st, 2016, 8:11 pm

Yeah, I'm really not a fan of the all-white-but-stripey snow...

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kepPNW
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Re: GE Post-Dollar Fire Imagery for Mount Hood!

Post by kepPNW » May 2nd, 2016, 2:23 pm

Zoomed in near Timberline the other day, looking for something, and found the snow to be about as ugly as anything I've ever seen on Google Earth. Hard to believe they released this!
Karl
Back on the trail, again...

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Charley
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Re: GE Post-Dollar Fire Imagery for Mount Hood!

Post by Charley » May 2nd, 2016, 10:13 pm

I think those are glacier striations.
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JUST KIDDING. It looks horrible!
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.

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Charley
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Re: GE Post-Dollar Fire Imagery for Mount Hood!

Post by Charley » May 2nd, 2016, 10:27 pm

Actually, to get into a rant here: are the satellites only capable of making images in the winter? These images are even less useful than the last generation, because the snow line is much lower. It's neat to see the clear cuts pop out like that in this generation but it seems vastly less useful in general. Instead of giving us a vision of the ground, we get to see a snap-shot in time of snow conditions during March of a given year. That's information of such an ephemeral nature! There's no possibility of seeing trail alignments in talus fields (very useful for planning photo trips and climbing trips), and little chance of checking out whether a slope is a meadow (probably passable) or a talus field (might be impassable in the uphill direction). This generation of imagery is much less useful for the off-trail climber or hiker.

BOO
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.

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adamschneider
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Re: GE Post-Dollar Fire Imagery for Mount Hood!

Post by adamschneider » May 2nd, 2016, 10:52 pm

I know that in cold climates (like Minnesota), they like doing aerial surveys in March or April because the snow is gone but the trees are still leafless, making roads much more visible. And this new aerial photography covers a lot more than Hood... so that may partially explain the timing.

But I'm surprised that Google went ahead and used the 3/31/16 data as the default choice for the snowy areas; Google Maps doesn't ALWAYS use the most recent imagery as the default, and this would be an excellent situation for them to rewind it a step or two. (Try sending feedback about it; maybe they'll listen for once?)

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mjirving
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Re: GE Post-Dollar Fire Imagery for Mount Hood!

Post by mjirving » May 3rd, 2016, 4:49 am

Most Google imagery now is aerial, not satellite, to get much better detail and quality. Fortunately you can have your cake and eat it too as you can "go back in time" on Google Earth and use any imagery you want that they've ever taken of a location. It's pretty easy to do it if you just look closer. (But also easy to miss if you don't look closely as there are so many bells and whistles on there)

Mike

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