All too often, reporters and editors seem to loathe working on weather stories. But I always loved them. There was plenty of reliable data from which we can extract cool graphics and a seemingly endless way to display it, depending on the story you want to tell.
A great example of a dynamite weather graphic ran in today’s Houston Chronicle. Click for a much, much larger look:
This graphic apparently ran as a full sideways page. And it’s just packed with goodness.
The main section across the top charts highs and lows for every day of 2011. Thin black lines show average highs and lows for each day. Grey lines show record highs and lows.
Icons show records set and tied. Of which there were several in late summer:
Call-out boxes show notable factoids like this 46-degree plunge on the first day of February.
The huge story in Texas this year, however, wasn’t the scorching temperatures. It was the lack of rain. The lower part of the page shows the accumulated amount of rainfall for the year (blue bars) as opposed to the average amount of rainfall (grey bars).
Also, maps show which sections of the state were officially under drought conditions, month to month. The year started off badly enough…
…but by early fall, the drought had become a full-fledged disaster.
Even so, 2011 was only the third-driest year in the past century.
Luckily for folks in Texas, their weather seems to be settling down into a somewhat more typical pattern lately.
The graphic was posted today by Chronicle science reporter Eric Berger. But it was drawn by Jay Carr, the Chronicle‘s graphics director. Download a PDF version here.
Last time I checked, Jay was only news artist left at the Chronicle.
A 1990 graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University, Jay spent a year as an artist and cartoonist for the Alexandria (La.) Daily Town Talk and another year as an artist with the Waco Tribune-Herald before joining the Austin American-Statesman in 1992. Jay moved to the Dallas Morning News in 1999 and then to the Chronicle in 2002. He was promoted to graphics editor in 2004.
Jay has no online portfolio that I can find, but here are a couple of samples of his work:
That latter one might seem a little familiar to anyone who’s seen my Art of Being Brilliant slideshow. In 2007, the Houston Texans dumped quarterback David Carr for Matt Schaub in — who, coincidentally, wore the same jersey number. Jay built this piece to show how to convert the nameplate on the back of your pricy replica jersey to the new player.
It’s still one of the more brilliant ideas I’ve ever seen.
The three big east Texas papers (Houston, Dallas and Ft. Worth) all had great graphics staffs in recent years. Jay was and still is a huge talent for the Chronicle. I’ve long been a big fan of his work as well as Alberto Cuadra (though he’s not with the paper any more).
Dallas did some fantastic stuff with folks like Chris Morris, Troy Oxford and Layne Smith. I think Layne is the only one of that trio still with the Morning News.
As for Ft. Worth, Steve Wilson just seemed to constantly crank out one awesome 3D graphic after another for the Star Telegram. I believe he’s still there, and, last I heard, was now working his magic into more interactive web projects.
Kudos to Jay for this one. I’ve grabbed the large version and am still looking it over. Nice, nice work.
Awesome work! Well done Mr. Carr