Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath is still being felt in many parts of the east coast. The storm, which hit many major metropolitan areas a little over a week ago, has caused untold billions in property damage and has cost the lives of dozens of Americans.
Today, Foursquare has developed a visualization that shows how the storm affected check-in patterns in lower Manhattan – an area hard-hit by Sandy.
“Our visualization of the before and after of the storm last week got a lot of attention, so we decided to dig a bit deeper and show how check-in patterns change during an event of Hurricane Sandy’s magnitude. Here’s a time lapse of lower Manhattan, beginning with the Saturday before the storm and ending early this morning, with much of power downtown having been restored. Besides the general ebb and flow of activity between day and night throughout the week, you’ll see the number of check-ins drastically decrease below 34th Street from Tuesday to Friday, when almost all of lower Manhattan was without power,” says Foursquare.
As you would expect, check-ins significantly drop off during the most intense parts of the storm and the time after when many people still had no power. Check it out:
Foursquare also reminds users that they can make donations to charities involved in the Hurricane Sandy cleanup by connecting the Snoball app to their Foursquare account. Snoball is an app that allows users to give small donations to organizations like the American Red Cross whenever they check-in to certain types of locations (let’s say a restaurant).