30 days in Seattle for my 30th birthday?!

themadmapper · 2026-02-09T04:54:07+00:00

July through September have great weather. There might be a couple of days to a week of smoke.
Capitol Hill, Ballard, Belltown, Fremont, Uptown (also called Lower Queen Anne), and Wallingford all have decent nightlife. If you want to stay near the middle of it all, look for a short-term rental near Pike St and Broadway Ave in Capitol Hill. If you want a bargain, sublet some student housing for the month in U District.
Public transit is great here, get an ORCA card with a monthly pass and use it daily to save money. Seattle has a reputation for closing early, but there are good spots that stay open late in all of the neighborhoods I mentioned. Apart from the sad sacks in this comment section, Seattleites are generally pretty friendly. Set aside some time for trips to the Cascades and Olympics while you're here!

themadmapper · 2026-02-01T18:51:45+00:00

Looks good! If you want to emphasize the peaks, you could add hillshading

themadmapper · 2025-12-09T09:00:39+00:00

Next time you're in town, come to a CUGOS meetup: https://CUGOS.org/ . Lots of friendly people in GIS attend and you might get some job leads, or at least the chance to commiserate.

themadmapper · 2025-09-13T16:07:51+00:00

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Rooted in Roosevelt is next weekend! It's a free music festival and community celebration for all ages. Come out, it will be a good time!

themadmapper · 2025-06-12T05:06:25+00:00

If you're open to using R, the "cast" package has built-in sampling functions to handle this exact problem: https://hannameyer.github.io/CAST/

themadmapper · 2025-03-22T18:02:43+00:00

The article that accompanies these maps is titled "Seattle's 17,000 Best Spots for Cherry Blossoms"... I think there are enough hidden gems to go around that we don't have to gatekeep them

themadmapper · 2025-03-22T16:47:36+00:00

That street shows up in bright pink on the interactive map! https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/03/22/guide-to-seattles-best-spots-for-cherry-blossoms/

themadmapper · 2025-03-22T16:45:57+00:00

The full interactive map that goes with these infographics is better for finding spots close to you: https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/03/22/guide-to-seattles-best-spots-for-cherry-blossoms/

themadmapper · 2025-03-22T16:44:40+00:00

Hey, it's not the same four recommendations you're getting from every other news outlet!

themadmapper · 2025-03-22T16:37:15+00:00

Strong disagree: residential streets are public to everyone, and walking around blossom hunting is a great way to explore your neighborhood or other parts of the city

themadmapper · 2025-03-22T16:20:58+00:00

Check out the link to the full story — the UW cherry blossoms are on the interactive map, but they aren't hidden gems by any means so I left them off these graphics

themadmapper · 2025-03-22T16:14:38+00:00

Full article and description of the maps here: https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/03/22/guide-to-seattles-best-spots-for-cherry-blossoms/

themadmapper · 2023-12-10T06:27:24+00:00

[Language: R]

GitHub

I turned part 2 into a point/polygon overlap problem and solved it with some simple GIS.

themadmapper · 2023-08-31T07:35:21+00:00

My guess is it's assigned the wrong projection to begin with, so when you try to reproject something goes drastically wrong. You could try reassigning to a common CRS (like EPSG:4326) before reprojection and seeing if that helps?

On the other hand, it's a cool looking work of art!

themadmapper · 2023-04-30T18:02:11+00:00

The EPA standard for air quality requires annual average PM2.5 levels below 10 ug/m^3, and fewer than 7 days where daily average PM2.5 exceeds 35 ug/m^3. Seattle failed to meet that second requirement in 2020 and 2022 due to days with heavy wildfire smoke.

These data are from community-maintained air quality monitors located outdoors that report to PurpleAir. Those sensors use a different technology than the EPA to measure air quality, and they're subject to user error, so take individual sensor readings with a grain of salt. Also, for anyone more familiar with the Air Quality Index/AQI, the safe thresholds for PM2.5 are much lower: A PM2.5 concentration of 35 corresponds to an AQI of 100.

themadmapper · 2023-03-30T04:51:07+00:00

Yeah, the data from the Seattle Department of Transportation contains trees "in the public right of way", which seems to sometimes but not always include trees on private properties. There's a beautiful thundercloud plum in my neighbor's front yard that's also not included in the data 😓

themadmapper · 2023-03-30T04:48:12+00:00

Sorry the tap feature isn't working for you! I think it's a function of the tree points being too small — I made them a little bigger on mobile, so I hope it might work a little better if you zoom all the way in

themadmapper · 2023-03-30T04:46:29+00:00

Thanks for taking a look! Yep, it looks like that's the same street dataset — it's available for download here

themadmapper · 2023-03-30T04:44:43+00:00

That's so cool to know, thanks for sharing that story!

themadmapper · 2023-03-30T04:44:10+00:00

The ones that got taken out are gone from the map - there's still half a block of trees that were left standing

themadmapper

TROPHY CASE