Daily Overview

One regular dose of Earth from above

New Overviews are posted regularly on Instagram — follow @dailyoverview to see them as soon as they go up.

Camp Wildfire

39.759259°,-121.597808° - NASA

The Camp Fire, which is currently burning in Northern California, has become the deadliest wildfire in state history with a death toll of 42 as of this morning. The blaze has scorched more than 117,000 acres (47,000 hectares), destroyed more than 7,000 structures and forced 52,000 people to evacuate their homes. The fire is roughly 30 percent contained at the moment.

Mossel Bay

-34.185460°,22.146049° - Maxar Technologies

Mossel Bay is located on the Cape St. Blaize Peninsula, jutting off of South Africa into the Indian Ocean. The harbor town is home to roughly 130,000 people and is recognized as a center for both tourism and agriculture.

Chausey

48.870278°,-1.822500° - Maxar Technologies

Chausey is a group of small islands, islets and rocks in the English Channel, off the coast of Normandy, France. The archipelago comprises 365 islands at low tide, but only 52 island at high tide. Grande-Île, the main island, is 0.93 miles (1.5 km) long and 0.3 miles (0.5 km) wide at its widest. It is the only inhabited island in the Chausey group, with roughly 30 residents.

Spain Greenhouses

36.868331°,-2.368688° - Maxar Technologies

Greenhouses in Almeria, Spain, cover approximately 20,000 hectares of land (more than 75 square miles). The use of plastic covering (known as "plasticulture") is designed to increase produce yield, increase produce size, and shorten growth time. For a sense of scale, this Overview shows roughly six square miles. This image is on display right now at our exhibition at theprintspace in Shoreditch, London. We're also selling prints of it, and – thanks to theprintspace – we are able to offer FREE shipping throughout Europe during the exhibition, which ends November 26th! Visit to take advantage of this exclusive offer.

Eixample District - Barcelona

41.392184°,2.164928° - Maxar Technologies

The Eixample district in Barcelona, Spain, is characterized by its strict grid pattern and apartments with communal courtyards. This thoughtful and visionary design was the work of Ildefons Cerdà. His plan features broad streets that widen at octagonal intersections to create greater visibility with increased sunlight, better ventilation, and more space for short-term parking.

Beach Haven West

39.670417°,-74.233111° - Nearmap

Beach Haven West is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Stafford Township, New Jersey. The neighborhood, which has about 3,900 residents, was built upon salt marshes beginning in the 1950s. Looking at this Overview, it is evident that Beach Haven West was supposed to continue growing; however, a lack of permits from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Wetlands Protection Act of 1970 prevented it from expanding further across the Mill Creek delta.

Kwinana Beach Tire Graveyard

-32.217833°,115.774083° - Nearmap

A forklift divides thousands of tires into uniform sections on a large lot in Kwinana Beach, Western Australia. Kwinana Beach is an industrial suburb of Perth that contains several large petro-chemical refineries, including those run by BP and Alcoa. In the 1970s, many residents of the suburb accepted property resumption offers from the local government citing increased pollution, health problems, and other nuisances caused by growing industrial development.

Third Avenue Bridge

44.982972°,-93.259417° - Nearmap

Third Avenue Bridge passes over Upper Saint Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Originally, the Falls of Saint Anthony was the only natural major waterfall on the Upper Mississippi River; however in the 1950s and 1960s, a series of locks and dams was constructed to extend navigation to points upstream. A small portion of the lock system can be seen in the bottom right of this Overview. Surrounding this area is a 1.8-mile (2.9-km) self-guided walking trail with signs explaining the area's history.

LaSalle, Colorado Cattle Feedlot

40.325417°,-104.778639° - Nearmap

In this Overview, thousands of cattle can be seen on a feedlot in LaSalle, Colorado -- a small town roughly 50 miles (80 km) north of Denver. This particular feedlot has a capacity for 69,000 cows and is one of several owned by the largest cattle feeding company in the world. Other feedlots owned by company, located in Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, have an estimated total feeding capacity of more than 900,000 head of cattle.

Adelaide Canola Flowers

-34.439861°,138.557833° - Nearmap

Yellow canola fields are visible across the landscape north of Adelaide, Australia. While various crops are grown here, the canola fields are easy to notice because of their vibrant flowering color. The crop is grown for the production of oil, which is extracted by slightly heating and then crushing the flower seeds. Canola oil is primarily used as a source of biodiesel and also for cooking purposes.

Griend

53.251389°,5.254167° - Maxar Technologies

Griend is a small, uninhabited Dutch island located in the Wadden Sea, roughly 62 miles (100 km) northwest of Amsterdam. In the Middle Ages, the island housed a walled settlement and monastery, which were destroyed by St. Lucia’s flood in 1287. Later, a few farmers inhabited Griend between the 18th and 19th centuries, but continuous erosion pushed them away — the island remains only 25 acres (10 hectares) in size today.

Kingston, Jamaica

18.017924°,-76.870697° - Maxar Technologies

Kingston is the capital and largest city of Jamaica, located on the southeastern coast of the island. More than 660,000 people live in Kingston's metropolitan area, accounting for nearly one-quarter of Jamaica's total population. The city is surrounded by the Blue Mountains, Red Hills, Long Mountain and Kingston Harbour, which is the seventh-largest natural harbor in the world.

Dnieper River Snowdrifts

51.193056°,30.523833° - NASA

Swirling snow drifts accent the terrain surrounding the Dnieper River, which flows for roughly 1,400 miles (2,200 km) from Russia to the Black Sea. The Dnieper is the longest river in the Ukraine and Belarus, and the fourth-longest river in Europe. This amazing image was captured by European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet while aboard the International Space Station in February 2017.

The Bean

41.882694°,-87.623333° - Nearmap

Cloud Gate -- nicknamed "The Bean" because of its shape -- is a public sculpture in the center of AT&T Plaza at Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois. Created by Indian-born British sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor, it is made up of 168 stainless steel plates welded together and polished heavily to remove any seams. It is one of the most visited and photographed tourist attractions in Chicago, receiving upwards of 25 million visitors in 2017.

Commencement Bay Parasail

47.277111°,-122.452750° - Nearmap

A parasail is pulled behind a motorboat on Commencement Bay, just offshore Tacoma, Washington. Average water temperatures here can drop below 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7°C) in January and February, and often do not rise above 55 degrees Fahrenheit (12.7°C) in summer months.

Detroit

42.331389°,-83.045833° - Nearmap

Detroit is the largest and most populous city in the state of Michigan, with 4.3 million residents in its metropolitan area. It is best known as the center of the U.S. automobile industry, housing the headquarters of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Detroit is also a major port on the Detroit River, which is shown flowing through the city in this Overview — does anyone know why the river has two shades?

Maurtitius Ocean Currents

-20.473306°,57.309250° - Maxar Technologies

Just off the southwestern corner of Mauritius (shown at the center of this Overview) is what appears to be an underwater waterfall. In reality, it is just the flow of underwater currents and sand patterns on the ocean floor that form this spectacular optical illusion from the aerial perspective. Mauritius is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, roughly 1,200 miles (2,000 km) off the southeastern coast of Africa.

Chino, California Dairy Farm

33.989611°,-117.647222° - Nearmap

A herd of cows is ushered into a milking parlor on a dairy farm in Chino, California. For years, Chino was a center of dairy farming in Southern California, providing milk products to much of the southwestern United States. The industry peaked in the 1980s, when Chino and its surrounding areas had more than 400 dairies; today only a few remain.

Moose River Tributaries

51.270826°,-80.929432° - Maxar Technologies

Tributaries of the Moose River snake across snowy terrain near Moosonee, a town in northern Ontario, Canada. This area is part of the Hudson Plains Ecozone, a sparsely populated subarctic region extending from the western coast of Quebec to the coast of Manitoba. The ecozone contains the largest continuous wetland in the world, including the Moose River’s 41,900-square-mile (108,500 sq. km) drainage basin.

Sarychev Peak

48.091452°,153.199722° - Maxar Technologies

Sarychev Peak is located on Matua Island in the Kuril Islands of Russia. When the volcano erupted on June 11, 2009, the expulsion of debris caused significant interruption to air traffic between east Asia and North America. The eruption was also so great that astronauts aboard the International Space Station were able to photograph the plumes of ash and smoke rising from its cone, as the force of its shock waves dispersed all clouds covering the area.