Category: mapping

For those who like the wind, the best place to live would be Chicago, also known as the Windy City. Those of us who enjoy basking in nature’s greenery should be visiting the Emerald City of Seattle at least twice a year. And those who like fruit? Perhaps the Big Apple of New York City.

But where are rain-lovers (or haters) supposed to go? Perhaps those who love it should move to Portland, Oregon whereas those who hate the rain should steer clear of cities in the Pacific Northwest altogether. But is what immediately comes to mind when we think of cities and rain true? Do cities in the PNW actually get the most rainfall? As a map of the rainfall total by city shows us, maybe not. Prepare to be stupefied by which U.S. city gets the most rainfall, the place that gets the least, the rainiest region of the country, and the months of the year that see the most rainfall. We’ve got all the rainfall data you cirrus-ly seek.

View Rainfall Totals by City in a full screen map

The map depicts rainfall data of 282 cities like the rainfall totals of Kansas City, Iowa city rainfall, and the annual rainfall of New York City between 1981 and 2010. The precipitation data is from the National Centers for Environmental Information or NOAA. Precipitation, in this case, indicates “the liquid water equivalent of snowfall” and is in inches.

Which U.S. City Gets the Most Rainfall?

Of the rainfall rates of 282 cities in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and the Pacific Islands you can explore on the map, one stands out. The U.S. city that gets the most rainfall is the non-continental U.S. island of Pohnpei. Pohnpei is one of the Senyavin Islands, which is part of the Caroline Islands. It received an average of 181.22 inches of rain yearly between 1981-2010. Pohnpei tends to receive the most rain throughout May (18.35 inches). It’s least rainy month, February still receives 10.02 inches of rain, which is more than many cities receive in an entire year.

Pohnpei’s rain clouds clearly work in overdrive as the island even receives 24 inches more than the second rainiest place: Hilo, Hawaii. Learn more about Hilo and the other places in and near the U.S. that receive lots of rain on the table below.

CITY	STATE	ANN (INCHES)
POHNPEI-CAROLINE IS.	PC	181.22
HILO	HI	156.79
YAKUTAT	AK	155.12
KOROR	PC	147.64
CHUUK E. CAROLINE IS.	PC	134.54
MAJURO-MARSHALL IS	PC	127.42
PAGO PAGO-AMER SAMOA	PC	122.63
YAP-W CAROLINE IS.	PC	120.93
ANNETTE	AK	101.63
QUILLAYUTE	WA	99.54

Note that the first (and only) city to appear on the list of top ten rainiest places located in the continental U.S. is Quillayute, Washington. Fans of the Twilight saga may be familiar with this city as the Quileute tribe of werewolves were often seen running in the rain. At least Twilight portrayed accurate meteorology.

Which U.S. City Gets the Least Rainfall?

Pohnpei, Hilo, and Quillayute may receive nearly unbelievable levels of rain, but Yuma, Arizona, may be the most impressive place on the map. The city received an average of zero inches of rain throughout all twelve months of the year, from 1981-2010. Other uber-dry cities include Barrow, Arkansas, which you can see on the table below.

CITY	STATE	ANN (INCHES)
YUMA	AZ	0
BARROW	AK	4.53
BISHOP	CA	5.18
LAS VEGAS	NV	5.37
BAKERSFIELD	CA	6.47
WINSLOW	AZ	7.01
ALAMOSA	CO	7.31
RENO	NV	7.4
PHOENIX	AZ	8.03
YAKIMA	WA	8.25

The table contains three cities in Arizona with less than nine inches of rain yearly, two cities in California and Nevada, and one city in Arkansas, Colorado, and Washington. Yakima, Washington’s presence on the least rainy list may be shocking as we just finished telling you about how Quillayute, Washington is the first (and only) city to appear on the list of top ten rainiest places in the continental U.S.

What the Map Tells Us: The Rainiest Region

As is often the case, a map allows us to visually identify trends in data that may not be possible to pinpoint in an Excel spreadsheet. The map is grouped by the average annual rainfall of each of the 282 places in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and the Pacific Islands. Looking at the overall map, we can see that the southeastern United States appears to receive more inches of rain than the much dryer West. Let’s narrow down the rainiest region by selecting different ranges of the average annual rainfall.

When selecting the largest range (181.22-51.03), we see the majority of markers are located in the non-continental U.S. or down South. Just one city in both Oregon and Washington, along with one city each in Massachusetts and New Hampshire give us northern representation in the continental U.S. for the largest rain range. Several cities in Texas, Florida, and the entire South seem to be rainier than most cities in Oregon and Washington.

Let’s continue adding additional ranges, such as the next largest (50.95-43.21). We see a similar geographical pattern; cities in the northeast and midwest regions of the U.S. don’t pop up until you get to the 43.08-37.72 range. As we veer into 37.57 inches and below, we just start to see Western representation. A majority of Western cities see under 27.74 inches of rain per year, as compared to a majority of the southeast, which is by far the rainiest region with an upwards of 51.03 inches per year.

Mark Your Calendars For the Rainiest Months of the Year

The map’s default grouping is annual precipitation in inches, but we can see the other groupable categories by clicking the dropdown arrow in the bottom lefthand corner of the map. We’re curious about the truth behind common phrases like “June Gloom” and “April showers bring May flowers.”

When averaged, the month of June is typically the rainiest month of the year. The average June rainfall of all of the 282 cities is 3.55 inches. Compare that to February, which typically sees the least rain of the year with just over 2.55 inches. That’s an entire inch difference.

Here is the exact order of the rainiest months of the year:

• June (3.55 inches)
• July (3.50 inches)
• August (3.43 inches)
• September (3.41 inches)
• May (3.32 inches)
• October (3.21 inches)
• November (3.18 inches)
• December (3.10 inches)
• April (2.93 inches)
• January (2.78 inches)
• February (2.56 inches)

While Southern California’s “June Gloom” was proven true, May tends to bring even more rain than April, which debunks “April showers bring May flowers.”

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So, what’ll it be: the island of Pohnpei — or any of the Caroline Islands for that matter — or Yuma, Arizona? While you ponder that, see how you can put your own Excel data on the map:

• Export Google Contacts to Excel and Make a Map of Addresses
• How to Print Address Labels from Excel
• Use an Excel Pivot Table to Count and Sum Values

You can use our free mapping tool to visualize the locations in your Excel data.

Coordinating a neighborhood garage sale — be it large or small — is not an easy project. However, there is one important task that can be easy: making a neighborhood garage sale map. A map will ensure you and your neighborhood close out the sale with the most payoff. Bargain hunters will have access to all the information they seek in one place and they’ll easily be able to navigate your sale.

While a neighborhood garage sale map certainly makes it easier for buyers, it also makes it easier for sellers to make a profit. A neighborhood garage sale map you share on social media or even embed on your website can draw more savvy second-hand shoppers to your sale, increasing the odds your stuff sells. For all its benefits, it can be hard to believe any organizer of a neighborhood garage sale wouldn’t utilize a map. Putting together a neighborhood garage sale map is likely the easiest task of the whole project. Just gather the garage sale location data you probably already have, copy and paste into a customizable map, and you’ll be able to share it with the world!

View Neighborhood Garage Sale in a full screen map

Gather Your Garage Sale Data

The first step in making a neighborhood garage sale map is gathering your data. If you are the person in charge of your neighborhood’s garage sale or you’re sharing the coordination duties, you likely already have all the stops of the neighborhood garage sale noted somewhere.

You’ll want to move your data into a spreadsheet if it’s not already. Perhaps other organizers put all the locations in an image. While this makes sharing on social media easy, it adds one step to the map-making process. If you have all the garage sale locations in image form, the simplest way to move them into a spreadsheet is to use a JPEG to Spreadsheet converter. If you have the locations in a document, you can skip the image conversion and simply copy and paste the data into a spreadsheet. 

Easy Image to Spreadsheet Conversion

A tool like Easy PDF’s OCR converter will have your image data converted into a spreadsheet in no time. Just upload an image that includes locations of the garage sale and it’ll be converted to an Excel file to use with Excel or with Google Sheets for a more collaborative option. We’ll show you the minor adjustments you may need to make to the spreadsheet in a bit.

Document or Notes App to Spreadsheet

Perhaps instead of an image, you have a list of addresses of neighbors shared in an email or a community forum. Or, perhaps they’re in a Word Document or other place where you store notes. That data can be copied and pasted into your spreadsheet of choice. You’ll need to make some adjustments to get it to the correct format, but doing so won’t take much time at all.

The Best Spreadsheet Format for a Map

You’ll want to have your spreadsheet sorted into at least one column: an address column. This column is what we will use to map the points, so you’ll want to be sure it contains only addresses. If you’d like to specify a city, state, or country, add those in as separate columns.

An optional column you can add is a short description of each garage sale. Say each household participating in the neighborhood sale has let you know the specific things they’ll be selling. You can add that information to its own column to help buyers discern the spots they’d like to hit. You may also decide to add a numbered order column. This can give garage sale goers an idea of how large the neighborhood sale will be or make it easy to say “meet me at garage sale #27”. BatchGeo can also create numbered markers for you via Advanced Options > Label each marker.

You can also make it so map viewers have the ability to sort your map by the different categories of garage sales. This will allow treasure seekers to more easily hone in on the sales most up their alley. To do so, assign each location in your spreadsheet a category. For example, if you know one garage sale will mainly sell furniture and household items, you can add a column to your spreadsheet and assign this garage sale “Home goods”. Keep categorizing each sale so that when you make your map, it will be sortable by category.

Make and Customize Your Map

Once your data is in the best spreadsheet format for a map, all there’s left to do is map it! To ensure you accurately plot each and every sale, stick with a mapping tool that uses parcel geocoding instead of the less accurate interpolation. Our mapping tool uses the preferred method. Just copy and paste your data into the tool, and you’ll be able to move on to the fun part: customizing your map.

As our Introduction to Map Making on the Web tutorial highlighted, BatchGeo allows you to customize your map design and map markers. For map makers, you can choose from seven marker colors for the free version of BatchGeo and 10 marker colors with BatchGeo Pro. In both versions of BatchGeo, you can select from one of three marker shapes. To further customize your map, BatchGeo offers you the choice of five base map styles. Pick the one that stands out the most to you!

Share Your Map with the World

Now that you’ve finished making a neighborhood garage sale map that contains all the information a bargain hunter could ever need and more, it’s time to share your completed map with the world!

You can share the map to your Facebook page, Twitter, or Instagram, or other social media sites. To share a public or unlisted map on social media:

• Copy the URL from the location bar using Ctrl+C (Cmd+C on Mac). For example: https://batchgeo.com/map/neighborhood-garage-sale
• Paste that URL in an email, text message, or on a social network

You can even embed your map into your website, or really, anywhere. We also have the option to make your map a mobile map, which will help your bargain hunters to easily identify where they want to go on the day of the sale. Wherever you wish to share your neighborhood garage sale map is up to you, but wherever you want to share it, BatchGeo makes it easy.

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BatchGeo’s mapping software allows you to easily and accurately plot each and every sale of a neighborhood garage sale, no matter the size. Our users love that the maps they create with BatchGeo are customizable and totally shareable, as you can see:

Make your own neighborhood garage sale map today or check out how we make use of our mapping tool for other maps like building a Google Maps store locator without code.

We’ve come to the conclusion that the Earth isn’t flat nor spherical: it’s heart-shaped! Supporting this geological finding are the 185 towns around the world named after Valentine’s Day themes. With names like Heart’s Delight, La Rose, Lovers Leap, Valentine, and others, what’s not to love?

We like to think all of these towns were named in honor of the February 14th holiday. However, some got their namesakes elsewhere. What we are confident about is that at least the most common Valentine’s Day town names were selected with the February 14th holiday in mind. We’re also pretty certain the U.S. states with several sweet towns and the overall countries with heart-eyes for their town names must have chosen them on behalf of Valentine’s Day.

View Valentine’s Day Town Names in a full screen map

We got our lovely data from the Accuracy Project. You can sort by the most common Valentine’s Day town names or find more information about them below.

Most Common Valentine’s Day Town Names

There are 70 unique town names that have ties to Valentine’s Day on the map. However, seeing as we mapped 185 total towns, there must be some overlap. So, which Valentine-related town names are the most common? Discover the names in the double-digits below.

Diamond

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend so it makes sense that towns named Diamond are the most common. There are 23 Diamond towns throughout the world. Four are located outside of the United States while 19 are within. Additionally, there are six towns with Diamond-adjacent names. These include Diamond City, Nevada, both Diamond Corner and Diamond Valley, Barbados, Diamond Creek, Australia, Diamond Harbour, India, and Diamond Rock, Honduras.

Daisy

Just as you’ll find no shortage of daisies in stores around February 14th, there’s also no shortage of towns named Daisy, all of which are located in the U.S. Alabama is home to two Daisy towns, and using BatchGeo’s measuring tool, we were able to identify the distance between the two. The towns of Daisy in Butler County and Daisy in Etowah County, Alabama are nearly 170 miles apart. In total, there are 14 towns named Daisy (an apt number considering the February 14th holiday) but that doesn’t include towns like Daisy Hill and Daisy Park, Australia.

Valentine

You’ll find 12 out of the 13 towns named Valentine in the U.S. Nebraska’s town of Valentine was named for Edward Kimball Valentine, a judge and three-term Republican Congressman who represented Cherry County from 1879-1885). Another Valentine town, Valentine, Arizona, is notable for being one of the historic locations you can still find on Route 66.

The one international town of Valentine is located in Midi-Pyrenees, France. Other similarly-named towns are those named Valentines (with an s). There are two towns called Valentines, the first in Brunswick County, Virginia and the second in Treinta y Tres, Uruguay. Then there are the international towns like Valentine Island and Valentine Plains, both located in Australia, along with Valentine Creek, Maryland and Valentines Beach, New York.

Rose

Rose is the last common Valentine’s Day town name. There are twelve towns with this name, nine of which are located in the U.S. and two of which are in the state of Idaho. As with the two Daisy towns located in Alabama, we were curious how close Bingham County’s Rose and Caribou County’s Rose were to each other. The answer, thanks to the map’s measuring tool, is about 95 miles. There are also towns named Rose in Croatia, Italy, and Pakistan, along with over a dozen other Rose-related towns like:

• Rose Hall
• Rose Harbour
• Rose Hill x4
• Rose Lake
• Rose Prairie
• Rose Valley x2
• Roses x3
• Roses Well

The last town name on the list above, Roses Well, Nevada was originally a stagecoach stop on the Las Vegas to Beatty route. Located southeast of Beatty, it was abandoned in 1919. For more historical facts from over 100 years ago, check out 100 Years Later: Major 1919 Events Mapped Out.

Other flowery town names include Bouquet, Carnation, Flowers, Orchid, and Lily. Lily, South Dakota was founded in 1887 and named for Lily, the sister of Ross Parks, the town’s first postmaster.

U.S. States Struck by Love for Sweetly-Named Towns

Virginia may be for lovers as their town Love (located in Augusta County) proves, but there are other states home to more romantic towns than the four in Virginia. Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Kentucky are the states with loads of lovely town names.

Tennessee is home to eight towns with names related to Valentine’s Day. They include Arrow, Daisy, Flowers, Gift, Love Lady, Loveville (historical), Mount Juliet, and Romeo. We’re left wondering if the town of Romeo enlists the towns of Arrow, Daisy, Flowers, and Gift to unite with the town of Love Lady.

Then there are the seven Valentine’s Day towns located in Alabama. These include Candy (historical), Daisy x2, Diamond, Flowers, Love Hill, and Valentine. There’s no doubt Daisy is one of the most common Valentine’s Day town names; it’s already appeared three times in two states. Alabama’s other common town names include Diamond and Valentine.

There are also six lovely towns in Oklahoma: Cupid (historical), Daisy, Loveland, Loving, Romance, and Rose. Like Oklahoma, Kentucky also has six towns named after Valentine’s Day themes. These include Arrow, Daisy, Diamond, Lily, Love, Loving.

Countries With Heart-Eyes for Their Town Names

Overall, the map shows that the U.S. is saturated with sweetheart towns (136). But which international countries are also engaged with Valentine’s Day, so much so they name their towns after it? While it depends on if the country celebrates the holiday or not (find out via the Valentine’s Day celebrations around the world map), there clearly are a few countries with heart eyes for their towns based on some of their names.

Canada boasts seven lovingly-named towns, most of which are named after hearts or roses, like Heart’s Delight, Heart’s Content, and Heart’s Desire or Rose Harbour, Rose Lake, and Rose Prairie. Australia is home to five towns named after V-Day, most of which are are related to daisies or Valentine, such as Daisy Hill and Daisy Park and Valentine Island or Valentine Plains.

Four sweet towns are located in Jamaica while both Honduras and Barbados are home to three. South Africa, India, Haiti, Guyana, and France each have two Valentine’s Day towns, and there are 17 other countries that have one each.

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Well, sweet! Now that you know all the lovely towns named for Valentine’s Day, you can package up your Valentine’s Day cards (pre-stamped) to the closest sweetheart town. If you send them to the postmaster with a note, they can be postmarked and stamped from places like Valentine, Arizona. Or you could just be tickled pink you got Valentine’s Day facts to your heart’s content. Speaking of V-Day facts, learn more about the cities that break the bank on Valentine’s Day as well as 36 hours of #love: mapping Twitter and Instagram Hashtags.