Hurricane Matthew is no joke. With winds clocking in around 140 mph, it's knocked out power in multiple Florida counties as it buzzes up the coast. It's expected to bring between six inches and a foot of rain from areas across the coasts of central Florida to southern North Carolina.
If you're in a part of the country where you still have power, and you're weary of reading blowhards lying on the internet about the storm's power, you can get lost in the trippy colors and animations of open-source map data.
Ventusky, a web application __that shows real time images of weather conditions anywhere in the world, created an interactive map (pictured above and below) for tracking wind speed, temperature, precipitation, and more around the world. They use global models including ICON, developed by the German National Meteorological Service institution (DWD), GFS, which was developed by the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and GEM, developed by the Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC), to collect its data and form the maps.
Cameron Beccario created "Earth" from Global Forecast System models as well, and combined data from Earth & Space Research's OSCAR, NOAA's WAVEWATCH III, and Goddard Earth Observing System.
Both visualizers are for research purposes only, or for staring into when you're burned out on the Weather Channel.
NASA has its own 3D view of Hurricane Matthew, __that looks inside the storm, layer-by-layer.