Comments on: Map of National Weather Warnings and Forecasts https://pages.graphics.cs.wisc.edu/765-10/archives/506-map-of-national-weather-warnings-and-forecasts Course web for CS838 Spring 2010, Visualization Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:15:48 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.4 By: Nate https://pages.graphics.cs.wisc.edu/765-10/archives/506-map-of-national-weather-warnings-and-forecasts#comment-127 Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:28:42 +0000 http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Visualization10/?p=506#comment-127 Wow. If one ever wanted an example of why you can’t encode large numbers of categories with color, here it is. The large number of colors on the map are more or less impossible to match to the listed conditions, even with close inspection of the legend.

I think they could, to an extent, improve on this encoding somewhat. If, instead of choosing colors purely on category, they encoded several classes of weather conditions with color families and severity with color intensity (winter storm watch -> winter storm warning -> blizzard warning in deeper shades of blue), things might be a little easier to understand. Of course, you still have weather conditions that don’t fit well into a continuum, and quickly run out of color families for weather conditions.

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