Been wondering just how big that Deepwater Horizon oil spill [unleashing somewhere between 200K and 2 million gallons of crude a day] is? Look no further than Paul Rademacher's online tool. Note: you'll need to install a Google Earth browser plug-in to use it, by the way.
Quoth Rademacher:
The spill covers at least 2500 square miles of ocean surface. You can see the extent of the damage here as of May 6th, just southeast of New Orleans.
The niftiest part of Rademacher's endeavor, however, is the capability to overlay an image of the spill's surface area onto a map of something you can recognize more easily, such as Houston. It's almost creepy how the slick follows I-10 out to Beaumont. Houstonist played around with this for a bit, slapping it over various places before slathering it over Dallas - because we can, and Rhode Island - to remind you just how big Houston is. Check out our findings above, and feel free to go make your own digital oil slick.
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