Heimdall Research

Data / Storm Blackout and Restoration

Storms

County night-light readings after U.S. storms, with reported utility outages from EAGLE-I where they exist, plus tracks, forecast lines, satellite loops and videos. Storms 1.2 is the published package: 672 storms, on Zenodo, Hugging Face and Kaggle.

What the storm data covers

The download holds 14 tables, each as CSV and Parquet: storms.csv, county_summary.csv, county_daily.csv, utility_by_county.csv, declared_unmatched.csv, tribal_area_summary.csv, tribal_area_daily.csv, tribal_area_counties.csv, tribal_context_county_summary.csv, tribal_context_county_daily.csv, tribal_context_utility_by_county.csv, validation.csv, validation_pooled.csv and validation_holdout.csv, with the citation and the data dictionary. The Kaggle copy also has the notebook. Not in this download, free through the API: lights-out videos for most storms, storm-path videos for hurricanes and tropical storms, forecast maps and satellite loops. Get a free key. The county table is a night-light reading. It does not show the minute power went off or came back.

Estimates from public records and satellite night light. Not for real-time emergency response or for any decision about one address or property. Data disclaimers.

Download and API key

Sample videos

Sample videos for three storms in the published package.

Hurricane Irma, 4 states, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands, September 2017: how bright each county was at night, compared with before the storm (AL112017). Picture: night 7 after the storm, Sep 17, 2017 (UTC). One frame per night, from 7 nights before to 30 nights after the storm date (UTC) of Sep 10, 2017. Night light shows how bright each county looked from space. It is not a count of customers without power. Light returning suggests, but doesn't prove, power is back. Usual = each county's typical brightness on clear nights in the 30 nights before the storm. Line: the middle declared county. Hollow dot: fewer than 10 declared counties clear. Red line: tonight. Gray means no reading, not darkness. FEMA-declared counties: counties in the storm's disaster or emergency declarations. Includes 72 counties with only an emergency declaration. Nights with no satellite observation are flat gray-blue. A hatched county is one the satellite saw, but not clearly enough to measure. Dates are UTC. Provided as is, without warranty of any kind.
Hurricane Irma (AL112017), 7 September 2017 18:00 UTC through 11 September 2017 12:00 UTC. This map shows wind, not power outages. Each frame is one National Hurricane Center best-track fix. The line is the storm center up to that fix. The shaded rings are the 39 mph, 58 mph, and 74 mph wind areas at that fix. No rings: wind area not yet reported. The shaded rings show how far out each wind speed reached in each direction, from the National Hurricane Center's after-storm record. They are not the wind measured at any one place. Provided as is, without warranty of any kind.
Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands, September 2017: how bright each county was at night, compared with before the storm (AL152017). Picture: night 7 after the storm, Sep 27, 2017 (UTC). One frame per night, from 7 nights before to 30 nights after the storm date (UTC) of Sep 20, 2017. Night light shows how bright each county looked from space. It is not a count of customers without power. Light returning suggests, but doesn't prove, power is back. Usual = each county's typical brightness on clear nights in the 30 nights before the storm. Line: the middle declared county. Hollow dot: fewer than 10 declared counties clear. Red line: tonight. Gray means no reading, not darkness. FEMA-declared counties: counties in the storm's disaster or emergency declarations. Nights with no satellite observation are flat gray-blue. A hatched county is one the satellite saw, but not clearly enough to measure. Dates are UTC. Provided as is, without warranty of any kind.
Hurricane Maria (AL152017), 17 September 2017 12:00 UTC through 21 September 2017 06:00 UTC. This map shows wind, not power outages. Each frame is one National Hurricane Center best-track fix. The line is the storm center up to that fix. The shaded rings are the 39 mph, 58 mph, and 74 mph wind areas at that fix. No rings: wind area not yet reported. The shaded rings show how far out each wind speed reached in each direction, from the National Hurricane Center's after-storm record. They are not the wind measured at any one place. Provided as is, without warranty of any kind.
Hurricane Milton, Florida, October 2024: how bright each county was at night, compared with before the storm (AL142024). Picture: night 4 after the storm, Oct 14, 2024 (UTC). One frame per night, from 7 nights before to 30 nights after the storm date (UTC) of Oct 10, 2024. Night light shows how bright each county looked from space. It is not a count of customers without power. Light returning suggests, but doesn't prove, power is back. Usual = each county's typical brightness on clear nights in the 30 nights before the storm. Line: the middle declared county. Hollow dot: fewer than 10 declared counties clear. Red line: tonight. Gray means no reading, not darkness. FEMA-declared counties: counties in the storm's disaster or emergency declarations. Nights with no satellite observation are flat gray-blue. A hatched county is one the satellite saw, but not clearly enough to measure. Dates are UTC. Provided as is, without warranty of any kind.
Hurricane Milton (AL142024), 7 October 2024 06:00 UTC through 11 October 2024 00:00 UTC. This map shows wind, not power outages. Each frame is one National Hurricane Center best-track fix. The line is the storm center up to that fix. The shaded rings are the 39 mph, 58 mph, and 74 mph wind areas at that fix. No rings: wind area not yet reported. The shaded rings show how far out each wind speed reached in each direction, from the National Hurricane Center's after-storm record. They are not the wind measured at any one place. Provided as is, without warranty of any kind.

Ask an assistant

Connect an assistant with a free API key, then ask in a sentence. A track: "Show me Hurricane Milton's track." Spaghetti lines are the forecast lines: "Show the forecast lines for Hurricane Irma." A satellite loop: "Show the satellite loop for Hurricane Maria."