Nomad Challenge

Question: Did anybody in Australia notice a sudden dramatic climate change overnight?

I always considered geography to be one of my strongest subjects, but last time I checked, Australia was in the southwest Pacific, and there was no large land mass in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (let’s put aside those Atlantis and pole shifting theories here for the moment).  I know there is a lot of talk about global warming, shifting weather patterns and climate change, but seeing this on Google Earth this afternoon made me think, albeit momentarily, that perhaps we need to update the Plate Tectonic Theory?

The first imagery that appeared after upgrading to the latest version of Google Earth.

OK, no need to be alarmed. I’ll explain.

Here’s the situation: I noticed a Tweet this afternoon from a new Twitter follower @AngelWickenberg that mentioned how to track Hurricane Gustav on Google Earth.  It peaked my interest so I decided to open up the program and check it out.

Since I was on my older desktop PC that I don’t use as often, I had to upgrade to the latest version of Google Earth.  After the upgrade was complete and I opened the program, that image above shows what came up.  Zooming in a little bit, sure enough, that was Australia sitting there in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!

A closer view of Australia in the middle of the Atlantic

Eventually when you zoom in further, it became normal again.

My first thought was, this could be a funny thing to blog about.  Now that Australia is in the middle of the Atlantic, that would cut down my travel costs back and forth to the East Coast of the U.S. considerably!  Yay lower fares!

Quickly I realized, however, that this was a transparent view of the Earth, and that what looked like Australia sitting in the middle of the Atlantic, was actually the “bottom” of the Land Down Under.  Notice Tasmania is on the left of Oz, as if we were looking at a mirror or transposed image.  Still pretty cool though if you ever wanted to find out where one would end up if they drilled a hole all the way through the center of the Earth!

Back to normal!

OK, I know I am making a bigger deal out of this than is probably warranted, but I thought it would be fun to blog about!  Afterall, this is the start of a fun week here at Nomad Challenge.  That’s right, I have officially proclaimed this week as “Dance Week” on this website.  Be sure to come back often or you will miss out on all the fun!

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P.S. On a more serious note, the people of Louisiana and everyone else that has been affected by Hurricane Gustav are in my thoughts today.  I know quite a few people in the New Orleans and Lafayette areas of Louisiana so I hope they are all safe.  It looks like the eye may have gone right through Lafayette, one of my favorite regular travel stops during my previous job.  Here is a picture of that Google Earth imagery with the Gustav data and radar.

Hurricane Gustav in Google Earth

Stumble It!