Geohashing

Rochester has a relatively active Geohashing community and is probably one of the top five geekiest cities in the US by population percentage¹.

What is Geohashing

Geohashing, as defined in xkcd comic #426, is based on a random set of geographic coordinates generated (hashed) every day for people (or other autonomous beings, I suppose) to reach (meetup). The hashed value is actually the offsets within a one degree graticule (on degree of latitude and of longitude), so meetups are possible within each graticule where the generated location is reachable - not water, mountain, etc.

Due to the nature of the hashing algorithm used to generate the coordinates, it is impossible to predict them beyond the next NYSE trading day. On Saturdays around 4pm, there's an official meetup at the location specified by the coordinates.

Geohashing shares a lot of similarities with geocaching, although there's no caches and the locations are one-shot sorta deals. (Computing the probability of the geohash meetup being at the same spot twice before the end of the earth is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Due to the large body of water to the north, the coordinates for the graticules of Rochester, Lockport to our west, and Syracuse to our east are frequently unreachable. In this case, Rochester geohashers may wish to go with the coordinates for the Canandaigua/Corning graticule to our south.

The Rochester Rochester, New York graticule has its southeast corner at 43 degrees north, 77 degrees west and extends to the northeast at 44 degrees north, 78 degrees west. See RocWiki - Geohashing Google User Map or download the RocWiki - Geohashing.kml file to view in Google Earth.

A graticule is approximately 60 nautical miles (69 miles²) north to south along its meridians and varies in width depending on the latitude. At the equator it is 60 nm³ and at the poles it is zero. The farther north you go, the more difference between the width at the southern border of the graticule compared to the northern border.

Notes and References

• Go directly to today's coordinates..
  

• Or go to the backup graticule coordinates for today.

Comments:

Note: You must be logged in to add comments