What it would be like in your backyard

Sometimes I find it hard to know exactly how large a country is without looking at a globe (When I was a kid, I was convinced Germany was the size of New York. Oops.). Sometimes, even after looking at a globe, it isn’t so clear. So, when big events happen, it’s really hard to know how big the event is, exactly. Dimensions, a new project from the BBC, looks at helping with that problem. Above, you can see how big that major flooding in Pakistan (where there are reports of 8,000-10,000 victims sleeping in mud in 118-degree heat) is relative to the eastern seaboard (centered on Washington, D.C., the home to me and a few of my fellow co-bloggers). There are a bunch of disasters and events ready for you to enter your location and put it in perspective.