usa.bryanrite.com –

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!

In this week’s newsletter we have charts on Australian eucalyptus trees, political polls in the UK, the continued war in Iran and the impact on oil flows.

But first … Cyclone Narelle is continuing its path around Australia

We’ve been following the forecast – and historic – path of the storm over on this tracking page for the past week, with updates every few hours:

An earlier version of that tracking page also featured an animated version of this wind map, showing the wind speed and direction every three hours as the storm first crossed land in north Queensland.

This is based on – and using data from – the nullschool earth visualisation.

Elsewhere, Guardian Australia’s economics editor put together seven charts explaining why Australia was unprepared for the fuel crisis.

Four charts from the fortnight

***

1. Cheap drones are reshaping warfare

Like me, you’ve probably heard a lot about the asymmetric nature of the US-Israel war on Iran – with speculation about whether the conflict might be decided by who runs out of missiles, drones or interceptors first.

Reuters has done a great job of illustrating this:

It’s not exactly a chart but there’s something visceral and terrifying in the wave of drones they’ve drawn.

The Economist estimates that 22 million people across the Middle East live near a reported strike – they have mapped it here.

***

2. A great strait Sankey chart

The New York Times has visualised the flow of oil and gas through the strait of Hormuz in a single chart – where it comes from and where it goes:

This was a visualisation so simple and perfectly matched to the story it was trying to tell that it definitely broke through. In what must be a first, I was initially sent this by non-data people.

For another framing, the ABC covered the closure of the strait with a bunch of excellent maps.

The Times also had a great/scary story about melting glaciers in Antarctica and what that means for coastal cities.

***

3. First past the poll

Guardian UK’s visuals editor, Ashley Kirk, has taken a deep dive into the UK political polls. There’s a lot in this piece, which is mostly analysing the (alleged) volatility in the polling.

But given the ongoing discussion in Australia about the South Australian election, and how votes translate into seats, I was most struck by this chart:

Reform are polling at less than a third of the vote – but given the UK system this may be enough for a majority in parliament.

***

4. Now for something completely different

I was transfixed by this beautiful chart by Shandiya Balasubramaniam of a hundred years worth of eucalyptus records in the Atlas of Living Australia:

And yes, this is data – years are plotted horizontally along the x axis, and the ocean shows 35 different eucalypt species. The hills are density distributions of the counts of seven specific species and the stars and moon show the most observed species.

I recommend clicking through for the full explanation – there are also a couple of other wonderful charts on Shandiya’s page.

Bookmarks

Off the Charts

Lam Thuy Vo has a beautiful interactive in the Pudding about fertility – where you can follow the path of either the parent or the child.

I think what makes this so powerful is the focus on the journey and its challenges and pitfalls – but then also on the community that is there for you throughout. It’s very different from other fertility stories I’ve seen that tend to focus on the population level, levers to pull and what can be counted.

Sign up

Enjoying The Crunch? If you like what you see and think you might know someone else who would enjoy it, please forward this email or send them a link to the sign up page.