The Washington Post WLKY Louisville News (Viral Image)

NASA

Mapping the Polar Vortex

Chioma Anomnachi

English 2V

8 February 2019

The Weather Channel

AccuWeather
Introduction:

While reading Wood and Fels The borders of as state for example, but national
Nature of Maps, I was intrigued by their and state borders do seem to have an impact
section on the different ways that maps tell on our spatial relations to weather.
stories about nature. More specifically, I
My method for gathering the data
was interested in the way that phenomenal
was to ask a sample group of 7 Swarthmore
or notable weather events are mapped both
students to fill in a map of North America
officially and in the mind of the people who
that I had printed for them. I didn’t want my
experience them. Having just experienced a
subjects to have to fill in the map
noteworthy weather event in the last week
themselves or have an extensive knowledge
(around January 20th 2019), I wanted to
of the geography of North American
examine how students at Swarthmore
because I thought it would detract from the
visualized the Polar Vortex and the areas
focus on mapping the weather. Choosing
that were most heavily affected by it. The
the base map for my subjects to use was an
Polar Vortex also caught my attention
important part of my method because I
because it was an event that involved so
wanted a map that marked important cities
much news coverage in different forms.
in the US without being too crowded in text
Tracing the distortions between the images
that might detract from the main point of
of the reality and perception of a natural
the map. I also provided participants with a
event can reveal what aspects imprint
box of about 40 colored pencils so that they
themselves more on people’s minds and
would have a range of options in how to
how we signal those aspects visually. I am
create their maps. The project reveled some
also interested in the way that manmade
interesting themes in the way that
boundaries and borders interact with
“threatening nature“ or “nature as
people’s perceptions of natural events. We
grandeur” (Wood and Fels 17) is mapped.
all know that nature does not recognize the
The Results:
Analysis:
When I asked my subjects to draw the
maps, I made sure to phrase it in a way that
left room for personal interpretation. I asked
them all to “draw on the map what regions
you think were most affected by the polar
vortex that just happened.” People chose to
interpret that prompt in a few different ways.
Some people chose to only use one color and
shade in the area of the map that they felt was
coldest. Others chose to use multiple colors
and assign levels of coldness to different
geographical locations. Some chose just to
outline the part of the map that they believed
was coldest rather than coloring it in at all.
Shape/ Borders:
The first aspect that I noticed about
many of the maps that I gathered was where
people stopped their mapping. Many of the
subjects that I asked to draw maps chose to
map only the northern part of the US with a
particular focus on the Midwest and East
Coast. These mappings may be related to the
fact that the Polar Vortex was labelled by
many news outlets as the “the coldest air in
decades” to hit the Midwest (Washington
Post). That focus on the Midwest is readily
apparent in the maps that I gathered, but also
raises an interesting question of what people
see as the cutoff for the Midwest.
I looked at several different
mappings of the Polar Vortex from what I felt
were reputable and well circulated news
sources including the Washington Post, the
Weather Channel, and NASA. Each of these
maps mark the coldest area to extend from
around Detroit, MI to Des Moines, MN. This
trend is generally reflected in the maps,
especially maps 4, 5, and 6, the maps that
used different colors to shade areas by how
cold they were. Still, the range of the Polar
Vortex affected the whole US and many
limited their mappings to the area of
Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and
Ohio. I recognize that this trend in mapping
may have come from the way I phrased my
question as “map the area most affected” so
only the absolute coldest areas made the list
for some.
One notable exception to this is map
6 ft covered the entire US, though the
Midwest was still marked as the coldest.
After returning the map to me, the subject
said that since they are from a more tropical
climate, “I think everywhere on the map is
cold”. In mental mappings of the weather,
subjects are carrying not only what they have
seen or heard about the weather, but also their
own experiences as a benchmark for what the Polar Vortex also show its effects on parts
signifies extreme. of Canada. I also think that the map that I
chose to give to participants plays some role
Another trend that stood out to me
because it emphasizes the US over Canada
with regards to borders was whether Canada
and Mexico despite being a map of all of
would be included in people’s mappings of
North America. Canada and Mexica have
the weather. I intentionally chose a map that
been greyed out where the US is white in
included all of North America and did not tell
comparison, which centers the US as the
participants to only map the US because I was
important part of the map.
interested to see if Canada would register as
part of what people thought about when they Experience vs Reality:
mapped the Vortex in their minds. Woodmen
The influence of experience also
and Fels talk about the way that maps
played a large role in the way my subjects
“constructs the ideological” specifically
created their map of this remarkable natural
regarding the way that cartography invokes
event. In contrast to examining the places that
territory (Woodsman and Fels 7). As the
were left off of the map by many of the
NASA’s mapping of the Vortex clearly
participants, it is also worthwhile to note
illustrates, this cold front was not an
what area outside of the Midwest was
experience unique to the US. According to
included in almost all of the maps. That area
their satellite imaging, many areas of Canada
is the Northeast; only two people left this
were more heavily affected by the Arctic air
region out of the map despite the fact that we
than the parts of the US that received the most
were in no way the “area most affected” by
attention. But to the participants, who
the Polar Vortex. This inclusion reveals how
experienced the Vortex from within the US,
subjective memory mappings can be,
many of them stopped their mapping of the
especially in maps tied so closely to one’s
weather at the US/Canada border. I think that
experiences. The northeast is where the
this separation occurred for a few reasons.
participants experienced the event, this gives
First, having consumed news about the
it a special significance to the way that they
Vortex from the US, that news has clearly
remember the Polar Vortex despite what
been centered on the effect of the storm on
news sites reported as the areas most effected.
people within the country. However, many of
This phenomenon relates to Wood and Fels’
the popular maps that have circulated about
ideas about cartography gaining its authority
through its verifiability. While talking about
the mappings of physical places “the there
claim implies a reality test, you can go there
and look, a test that rises to the level of a
challenge: ‘Why would we put it there if it
weren’t so? Check it out if you want”’ (Wood
and Fels 7). The ability to go see something
in a place is possible if one is mapping a city,
a town, or a forest, but how does it interact
with a mapping of an event that is already in
the past? Without that ability to authenticate
that the northeast could be considered one of
the regions most affected by the Polar
Vortex, subjective opinions come into play.
We lived through it and we know it was cold
in the Northeast and that view of a past event
becomes enshrined in the vast majority of the
maps created by the participants.
New Media and Viral Images
The final aspect of these maps that I
want to focus in on is the impact that “new
media” has on the way we perceive and talk
about weather. Wysocki defines new media
as the understanding that “various
materialities of a text contribute to how it,
like its producers and consumers, is read and
understood” (Wysocki 15). While new media
is not limited only to object produced
digitally, in many cases digital mappings or
other productions that are meant to be widely
circulated on television and online fall into
that category. The biggest example of the
impact that social media had on the mental
mapping of the Polar Vortex is the image that
went viral online of a map of the air-flow
during the event. This image was shared
widely on social media platforms like Twitter
and Tumblr because the map resembled a pair
of breasts in its shape and the placement of
the two areas of lowest pressure. While the
image was a joke to many, it impacted the
way that some of the subjects drew the storm,
particularly in maps 5 and 2. After my
subjects had drawn their map, I asked them if
they had seen the image prior to creating their
map and ¼ of them had. This number was
lower that I initially expected it to be, but in
both of those maps you can see the influence
of that particular mapping of nature. In this
case, the materiality of the map impacted the
way it spread and was distributed which in
turn impacted the way that the storm was
remembered by over 25% of the group.
There are other ways that the maps
produced by news outlets embodied
Wysocki’s definition of New Media. One
important trend that I noticed was the use of
colors in each of the maps. I gave each
subject a box full of colored pencils yet most
gravitated towards shades of blue, purple,
orange, green, and red. While the coding for
which color represented the coldest region
was not consistent between maps, everyone
was drawn towards these colors. I believe this
is because they are colors associated with
either cold or nature, though the argument
could be made that there are plenty more
colors associated with those two categories.
Additionally, only one of my subjects
included a key in his map 5 while the rest
assumed that looking at the map would be
enough to understand which area they meant
was most affected. I think this influence and
assumption of shared knowledge also comes
Conclusion
My project ended up being a
combination of the memory mapping project
and the data based one because I am
comparing the maps that my subjects created
to actual data of what areas the polar vortex
affected most. Examining the way that a
from the most common pictures, maps, and
diagrams that are seen online and on tv news.
These associations have meaning because the
way that people put together maps is not
unconscious, as Wysocki says “any text- like
its composers and readers- doesn’t function
independently of how it is made and in what
contexts” (Wysocki 15). With the colors of
the maps being one of the main choices that I
asked my participants to carry out in this
exercise, it is telling of just how much our
maps are influenced by what we have seen
that all of them chose such similar colors.
group of people remembers an extreme
weather events reveals interesting patterns
about how memory of events closely tied to
geographic location are mapped in the mind.
These patterns give us insight into the way
that new outlets, social media, and personal
experience shape the way people remember
natural phenomena.
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