Dixie Wildfire Plume

The plume of California’s 2021 Dixie wildfire was so massive, it showed up on radar. The New York Times newsroom graphics team and R&D collaborated to take radar data and reconstruct the file’s plume in 3D for a front page print article, interactive web article, and augmented reality explainer.

As I wrote in an article for The New York Times’ behind-the-scenes tech blog, Open, while the team was researching the event, I supported their analysis with stats and visualizations made in Python from radar station data. For publication in our web article, I generated 3D volumes in Python, then processed, styled and animated them in Houdini. Alongside this work, I developed an augmented reality explainer, writing custom shaders for rendering cloud volumes on mobile.

Covered in an article by Times Insider, a series which delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how Times journalism comes together. Published as a Lesson of the Day by The Times’ Learning Network, a free resource to help people use Times materials for teaching and learning.

👤 Role: Software Engineer

🏆 Awards: Society for News Design Silver Medal, from the judges: “The 3D is nicely produced but also data accurate, which adds a level of precision you don’t often see. This project is near perfect.”

Highlights