The world’s largest weather vane can be found in Yukon, alongside the runway at Whitehorse airport, in the unusual form of a DC-3 plane.

After 28 years of service, mostly among Canada’s northern communities, the plane was retired in 1970 and lay idle for a while. Volunteer effort led to its restoration and it was mounted on a carefully designed pedestal in 1981. The plane is so well balanced that a wind of only 5 knots will cause it to turn. According to Wikipedia, the DC-3 is almost 20m long, 5m high and weighs over 8000kg.

I should mention that, from what I can tell, the plane has not been officially recognised, with the Guinness World Record currently being held by a weather vane atop the Tio Pepe facility in Jerez, Spain. However, as it’s somewhat smaller than a plane, and the Google images are not great, it’s hard to spot. Live Maps has a clearer view.

It’s difficult to find much information about the Tio Pepe weather vane – this site describes it as standing almost 40m tall (but judging from the pictures that height must includes the building it is atop) and weighing 2700kg.

In addition, there is a weather vane in Montague, MI staking a claim to be the largest, though again – at 14m tall and 8m long – it may be taller than a DC-3, but is not quite as big! The Google imagery of the town is very low resolution, but Live Maps has a pretty good bird’s eye view.

Have you ever wondered how they get planes clean? Well at Heathrow we can see the plane cleaning crews hard at work, but for some reason it’s the wet outlines of absent planes that are the most interesting.

Anyone who has read our book would already know that there’s just one automatic plane wash in the whole world – and we can see it clearly at Tokyo’s International airport.

Since we first wrote about Tokyo’s plane wash, Street View has given us another view of the structure – which from this angle looks like a big plane made from scaffolding!

See our previous post on The Langoliers.

Thanks to ChrisW.

There are lots of interesting and weird things to notice around Great Salt Lake, the largest salt lake in the western hemisphere.

First up, the western shore of the lake houses something that appears to belong in a ‘Trivial Pursuit for Giants’ game. It’s actually part of a magnesium plant which at one point was the highest emitter of toxic chemicals in the US.

Just to the north-west are assorted military facilities including bunker entrances and missile storage sites.

On the eastern shore, and on the salt flats, are facilities using the natural resource from the lake – salt farms and mines. Many others can be seen around the lake.

A couple of people with sharp eyes found this plane flying over the middle of the lake.

And one reader is convinced that this is a door to the netherworld.

Let us know what else you can find around Great Salt Lake.

Thanks to Ben, Alex Cleveland, Marty, Brian, Benjamin, James Adams, Nathan S, Graham Wall, Noknok, Leandra.

English Russia recently published a report on a “crashed” plane in the Russian forest near St. Petersburg. The plane in question is an AN-8 light military transport aircraft of a type which was used by the Soviets up until the 1970s.

However on closer examination of the satellite shot, as well as the ground level pictures posted to English Russia, it looks that this plane is highly unlikely to have crashed!

Whilst it is sitting at the end of a paved clearing (which could maybe be a very short runway), the aircraft is facing the wrong direction to have simply overshot an attempted landing. Furthermore, the lack of damage to the exterior suggests it probably didn’t come down in the forest, as the trees would have torn at the wings.

Which leaves us with the question of who put this plane here, and why?

It’s Volcano Week 3 here at GSS, which explains why all of our posts over the course of the week are very likely to be volcano related.

Mount Nyiragongo is an active volcano in the Virunga mountain range which runs along the northern border of Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda.

Together with its partner in crime, Mount Nyamuragira, the volcanoes are disproportionally responsible for nearly two-fifths of Africa’s historical volcanic eruptions.

Nyiragongo last erupted in early 2002, when a large river of lava wreaked havoc on Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, destroying 40% of the city. Thanks to early-warning systems the majority of the population were evacuated, however some 120,000 people were made homeless in the devastation.

The Google Earth image of Goma was taken 3 years later, in February 2005. The dried lava flow is still apparent throughout the city including Goma International Airport, where the northern third of the main runway has been obliterated.

Today the airport is still closed to international flights and, as they are cut off from taxiing to the runway, the planes seen here have been trapped at this airport ever since the eruption.

Read more about Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira on Wikipedia and see ground level pictures on the BBC.

Thanks to Jez Robinson.