You Can Now See Real-Time Weather in Google Earth

Say goodbye to online weather sites with their silly numbers and prehistoric .gif images of rainclouds; starting with Google Earth 5.2, you will now be able to see rain or snow patterns as they happen in real time!

Though the weather has been available through Google Earth since 2007, the cloud images were often several hours behind. Now, “the latest version projects images of rain and snow over the areas with those weather patterns as it’s actually happening.”

Google’s Lat Long Blog explains the new weather layer:

First enable the clouds layer, then zoom in to a particular location where it might be raining or snowing. I’m willing to bet London is a likely spot, even these days, or the Lone Star state (pictured below) which is in the midst of tropical storm season. Currently, our precipitation data cover some areas in North America and Europe; you can see if it’s available in certain places by enabling the radar layer.

Give it a whirl here.

(via ReadWriteWeb)