About NextGen Map Pack (U.S. Version)
Each map in the NEXTGEN U.S. Map Pack has been hand crafted with care, by hand – no automation. This is done to get as much accurate data in place as possible, while keeping the maps looking clean and crisp – no data overpopulation.
This project took by far the most amount of time to create and get finalized, taking an entire month to create an entirely new GIS system, then proceed to export the data for every single map one layer at a time. After typing out and placing down thousands of cities and positioning interstate icons, cleaning up oddities, and adjusting color to appeal to a wide group – it’s all here.
More
The Next Generation of Weather Maps
A few new key layers that weren’t in the previous map pack include Terrain Overlays and Interstates (and their icons). Terrain Overlay layers are excellent to place on top of your map fills, which will add some terrain texturing to the map and the fills themselves.
Here’s a complete list of PNG layers that are available:
- Cities
- Interstate icons
- Interstates
- States
- Counties
- Coastline
- Lakes
- Rivers
- Terrain overlay (25% opacity)
- Terrain overlay (10% opacity)
- Basemap
- Landmass
- Landmass with glow into ocean (if ocean is visible in map*)
- Ocean
- Ocean mask (this is an option to drop over your map to remove fills that overlap into the ocean, if you’d prefer not to have any ocean overlap)
State maps come in the following resolution: 2650 x 1500 pixels. This allows for a moderate amount of zooming if you forecast for a particular part of a state.
Regional maps are in raw-size format, and are 3506 x 2479 pixels. This allows for significant amounts of zooming with no quality loss, until you’re at near-state level zoom.
NEW (as of November 6th, 2020):
Added a package of state map fill masks. These make it easy for you to contain fills to the state at the center of the state map you’re creating a forecast/map for, in a program such as PowerPoint.
NEW (as of October 28th, 2020):
New tutorial for PowerPoint users on how to utilize the included image elements to create a professionally layered map with the included image elements each map includes: https://youtu.be/8Rj6psttsnY
NEW (as of August 20th, 2020):
Uploaded an additional map, this one of the Atlantic.
Each state’s name below is linked to a 75% quality map preview.
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
Each region name is linked to a 75% quality map preview.
What’s to come
An update that will bring a mask layer to all state maps that can be used to remove fills outside of the state you’re forecasting for- A darkening layer for state maps, that can be used to darken out the outer region surrounding the state the map a built around
A small update that ships blank city bars that will allow you to add your own custom citiesA small update that will ship blank interstate icons to add additional, custom interstate icons where you’d like
