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This applet uses a particle system to visualize wind patterns in the
San Francisco Bay Area, using
observed wind data
and a computed vector
field based on these data.
The applet here is based on data from Sun Jul 25 17:35:02 PDT 1999,
but thanks to the good folks at USGS you can find a current animation
at
http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/wind/streaklines.shtml.
The source code for the applet is available
under the terms of the GPL.
Many thanks to Chad English at USGS for making the raw data
available, and explaining how to interpret it, and putting the
applet up on the USGS site so that people can see the latest wind
patterns.
The applet may take a while to start up - the data points are stored in
a text file that takes up 130K. This could be sped up by representing
each data value in 2 bytes (instead of about 5) and by using fewer
data points.
You can stop/start the animation with a mouse click.
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