Correctional Facilities Shouted Out by Petey Pablo

I've been following the Hip Hop Map Project for a while but don't think I've posted anything from it. This is a map of all the correctional facilities in North Carolina mentioned by Petey Pablo in Raise Up. Admittedly the main reason I like it is for the innovative use of handcuffs as point symbols.

for a slightly more legible version click here

His music is full of geographic references though he says them so fast it's hard to keep on top of them all. Anyway, if you really want to dig into it there's a list of all the places mentioned on the project page.

Drought Conditions

Many years ago I did a quickie blog post showing NOAA's Drought Monitor. The maps have not changed much (except being a bit easier to read) but the conditions lately have been bad enough to warrant a look at the latest map. 

The dark brown shows areas of "exceptional" drought, a step above "extreme" drought. S and L are for short and long term effects, many areas show both letters.

This NOAA map shows how much rainfall is needed to make up for the drought. In many areas it is well over a foot.

While parts of the Dallas area got over a foot of rain in the last few days, that kind of heavy rainfall tends to drain quickly and not help the situation very much. Comparing last week's map there is only a small decrease in the size of the exceptional drought area. 

Where Livestock Outnumber People

I just discovered Erin Davis and her site while looking for unrelated content. She's done some great work with maps and statistics including this map showing what counties have more livestock than people (data is from the USDA).

I love the big circle legend. It lets you dig into a complicated multi-variate color scheme so you can see that, for example the green areas (such as southwestern Wisconsin and northwestern Arkansas) primarily have a combination of cows (blue) and chickens (yellow) and not so many pigs. Black areas such as in Montana have more of all three than people.

 Scroll down the page and you can see the individual maps for each animal plus maps of counties with more goats, sheep and turkeys than people.

Finally, at the bottom is a map of the most common type of livestock by county.

For the entire map set go here.

Sleep Under the Stars

Next Monday is Sleep Under the Stars night. Cartographer Sarah Bell created this star chart styled map showing climbing spots and campgrounds in the United States

*Sleep Under the Stars* day is coming up August 8th — as I am easing out of my climbing vacation. So why not map all US car-accessible campgrounds & select climbing spots styled as a star chart? pic.twitter.com/JKjsABqb2f

— Sarah Bell (@sarahbellmaps) August 1, 2022

 Here is a more full view of the map.