KML Mashup Experiment

by KUMIKO YAMAZAKI on August 24, 2008 • google maps: kml mashup • COMMENT

Here’s a KML experiment I did over the weekend — annual precipitation of California, 1961-1990.

Some tweaking and headaches involved but I’m satisfied with the result. Rule #1 as a cartographer is to make every map created here look pretty.

The data was originally for the entire U.S. which bloated into a 22 MB kml file. Rather than simplifying and sacrificing such good data, I clipped out California. The kml is currently at 2.4 MB and still loads a bit slow but at least I now have a better understanding of how well Google Maps handles data.

(Not great, though it sure looks nice!)