See How Tulsa Has Changed In 32 Years, With Google Timelapse

Google has released a tool that lets you see how any city in the world has changed over the last 32 years.

Google says Timelapse is a global, zoomable video made from 33 cloud-free annual mosaics, one for each year from 1984 to 2016, "which are made interactively explorable by Carnegie Mellon University CREATE Lab's Time Machine library, a technology for creating and viewing zoomable and pannable timelapses over space and time."

"We combined over 5 million satellite images acquired over the past three decades by 5 different satellites," Google says.

The majority of the images come from Landsat, a joint USGS/NASA Earth observation program that has observed the Earth since the 1970s.

Google was careful to select images with no clouds obscuring the ground.

For 2015 and 2016, Google says it combined Landsat 8 imagery with imagery from Sentinel-2A, part of the European Commission and European Space Agency's Copernicus Earth observation program.

Search, pan, or zoom around to begin exploring our new Timelapse, or even check out our YouTube highlights.

Visit the Timelapse page here

You can also create a timelapse tour that moves from one destination to another over time using the Timelapse Tour Editor.

The timelapse of the Tulsa area shows major changes, including the completion of Highway 169 to south Tulsa and the construction of the Creek Turnpike. The satellites also recorded rapid growth in housing in Owasso and Tulsa Hills, for example. 

The video also shows how the spillway at Oologah Lake created a stream bed when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened it for the first time in 1986.