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Map Animation from NASA Shows Five Months of Global Weather in Just Two Minutes

Remember thunderstorms?

​It's truly amazing how much data NASA has on tap at any given moment. This time, the agency has unleashed a loop of the planet's precipitation between April and September of last year, making it a very timely #ThrowbackThursday.

What we see is the broad swaths of land and ocean these storms travel over. In the case of the United States, bouts of rain form over the Pacific Ocean, then move over the country and finally migrate across the Atlantic, sometimes dumping more rain over Europe. It's a marvelous reminder how we're all interconnected, especially the weather.

The map, which is a first of its kind, was a collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Data was pulled from a dozen of satellites with the each snapshot taken every half hour.

The purpose of this to help scientists better understand the Earth's climate and how it could change in the future, the video's description explains. If anything, it makes us miss thunderstorms.