If you want a captivating view of the winds of the world, the interactive online Earth Wind Map will mesmerize you. The earth.nullschool.net site provides a nearly hypnotic visualization of the winds blowing around the world. You can rotate the globe to any area—say Antarctica, the Indian Ocean or the Western Hemisphere. You can zoom in to take a closer look at a particular region, such as the winds swirling off Ireland. The tool bar in the lower left corner lets you adjust the winds for atmospheric height from sea level into the jet stream and beyond or look at temperature, currents and waves. The site pulls hard data from the National Centers for Environmental
Prediction and others and turns it into moving, informative art. Storm buffs might also want to check out the live lightning map at lightningmaps.org.
Cool Apps
What’s in Your House?
Even with better storm warnings, you don’t have time to inventory your house, just in case it ends up on the front lawn. Home inventory apps from insurers and others can help by enabling you to take pictures of your stuff, scan it by barcode, organize it by room and add receipts and other documentation. Check to see if your insurer offers one.
Allstate Digital Locker lets you create a photo inventory of your home’s items and store it on the cloud. You can organize your personal property by room, category, purchase date, price or alphabetically if you like. You don’t have to be a customer.
Liberty Mutual Home Gallery helps you catalog items by room or category, add items by importing photos from your phone, and track items in multiple properties or homes. You don’t have to be a policyholder.
The Know Your Stuff app from the Insurance Information Institute allows you to create your inventory using the app or the institute’s online software.
Encircle offers an inventory and documentation tool for everyone from homeowners to property managers and insurance professionals. You can log the details of the property and then sort it by room and item.
Sortly is an all-around organizer app to catalog and track your stuff for home inventory, moving, collectibles and small business inventory. (Apple)
HomeInventory helps you catalog your belongings with data such as make, model, serial number, price, date and receipt. You can even attach files such as a digital owner’s manual. ($25, Apple)
