Syabru Besi is downriver of the border and the starting point for the Langtang valley trek which is probably the third most popular trekking location in Nepal (behind Everest basecamp and Annapurna circuit). I think the tourist data they have is from tourists that are traveling with guides but from my experience many tourists also bypass the official requirements and trek solo so the number could be much higher if the Langtang is affected.
Building data comes from OvertureMaps data which is a superset of OSM. I update the building data set each month so if you make changes in OSM they should show up on ShadeMap at latest 30 days later.
The map likely geolocated you somewhere without buildings (or maybe in the ocean) and where it is the middle of the night (so everything is in shadow).
Try this link which shows the shadows at the Space Needle in Seattle WA today at 5pm:
Site maintainer here. There is a polygon drawing tool in the upper right corner of the map. You can use it to draw polygons on the map and assign them a height. The shadows will update instantly. You can use it to add buildings that are missing from the map, simulate a tree placement or even simulate cutting down a tree if you set the height to 0.
Very cool tool! It's generally accurate, but, there are spots showing shadows where there are no trees or anything at all to cast a shadow, and missing several spots where there are actually trees.
It's missing a 40' tall ash, a 40' tall maple, and all four 30' tall blue spruce. So they're not exactly small trees. Our septic field is showing as in shadow all day even though there are no trees near it. That shadow doesn't move at all like the rest so I'm not sure what it's detecting.
Sorry about that. The current tree estimate is done via computer vision but I am working on migrating to LiDAR backed data which should eliminate false positives.
Just waiting for the TBs and TBs of data to download and then this Macbook M4 is going to make some heat...
Hi there! My office window faces east and this morning, your map showed shade from the building across the street (correct), as well as shade from my building on the lawn below my window (incorrect).
Thanks for the reply. Do you have a tree or bush outside your window? I estimate where tree shadows fall but it's not super accurate. In the settings dialog you can toggle, "below canopy", "above canopy" or disable tree shadows altogether.
I've seen the setting, and I've seen that you suggest toggling it when tree shadows seem inaccurate, can you elaborate on what that setting does exactly?
"Top of canopy" - view from above like looking down from an airplane window. You won't see any shadows looking down on a forest because you only see sunlight landing on the top of the canopy. Most accurate.
"Below canopy" - what shadows would look like on the ground. If you're in a dense forest everything is in shadow because the trees obscure the sun. I guesstimate how big and where the below canopy shadows land. Any vegetation that's more than 2 meters tall, I place a shaded area beneath it. Not super accurate because it treats trees like cylinders instead of a sphere/triangle on top of a cylinder.
"No trees" - only building and terrain shadows are shown on the map.
Not specifically for eclipses but has been useful in finding places where the sun will be visible during the current eclipse since the eclipse will occur when the sun is quite low on the horizon.
