You can’t normally see water currents or the wind. Now you can: A computer code used to visualize wind has been adapted by researchers to show surface currents of the Great Lakes.

The code was originally developed to make a http://hint.fm/wind/by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg currently lead Google’s Big Picture visualization research group

The information, updated in hourly projections, comes straight from the National Weather Service’s Digital Forecast Database.

Researchers at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Michigan saw the stunning wind map and figured it could be applied to surface currents of the Great Lakes, which are largely driven by wind. They were right.

The result? Click here — A stunning map of surface currents on the Great Lakes.

(full story)