The vastness of Texas is a well-known fact, often touted by Texans themselves. A viral map recently circulating on social media attempts to visually represent this immensity by overlaying the outline of Texas onto a map of Europe. But does this map accurately depict the true scale of Texas in comparison to the European continent?
The Viral Map: Texas Over Europe
The map, shared widely on platforms like Facebook, positions Texas across Western Europe, seemingly covering significant portions of countries like France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. Accompanying captions often express surprise or emphasize the sheer size of Texas. The claim suggests that Texas is geographically comparable to a large chunk of Western Europe. While visually striking, the accuracy of this comparison needs closer examination.
Snopes, a fact-checking website, rated the claim presented by such maps as “Mostly True“. This rating acknowledges that while the maps convey a general sense of Texas’s large size, they often moderately exaggerate the state’s borders when placed over Europe. Despite this slight distortion, the underlying message about Texas being remarkably large holds considerable truth.
Expert Analysis: Texas is Vast, But Map Slightly Exaggerates
Hayley Drennon, a senior research assistant at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, confirmed the general validity of the size comparison. “Texas really is THAT big,” she stated, acknowledging the initial impression conveyed by these maps. However, to assess the accuracy more precisely, Drennon recreated a similar map using data from the Texas Department of Transportation (TDT) and ESRI’s ArcPro Software, a professional geographic information system.
Her map, based on official geographic data, provides a more precise overlay of Texas on Europe. When compared side-by-side with the viral Facebook map, subtle but important differences emerge.
The comparison reveals that the viral Facebook map stretches Texas’s boundaries slightly. For instance, El Paso County, located in West Texas, appears closer to the border between Spain and France in the Facebook version. In Drennon’s more accurate map, El Paso County sits further north. Similarly, the southernmost parts of Texas, like Cameron County, extend almost to Rome in the viral map, while in the data-driven map, they are also positioned further north.
This subtle exaggeration doesn’t negate the overall point, but it highlights the importance of accurate geographic representation.
The Role of Map Projections: Mercator Distortion
The discrepancies in map overlays can be attributed to map projections and the inherent challenges of representing a spherical Earth on a flat surface. The Mercator projection, a widely used map projection, is known to distort sizes, particularly exaggerating areas further away from the equator, such as Europe and North America.
Websites like The True Size (used to create the viral map) explicitly address this distortion. Their “About” page explains that the Mercator projection inflates the size of countries near the poles while understating the size of those near the equator. This distortion is why Greenland appears to be as large as Africa on many world maps, when in reality, Africa is over fourteen times larger.
Therefore, while tools like The True Size are useful for visualizing relative sizes, the underlying Mercator projection can introduce some size exaggeration when comparing mid-latitude regions like Texas and Europe. The viral map, likely created using such tools, inherits this inherent distortion.
Texas Size in Numbers: How Big is the Lone Star State?
Regardless of slight map exaggerations, Texas is undeniably a massive state. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Texas boasts a land area of 261,193.9 square miles and a water area of 7,330.9 square miles. This combined area of 268,524.8 square miles solidifies Texas as the second-largest state in the United States, surpassed only by Alaska.
To put this into perspective, Texas is larger than many countries in Europe. While directly comparing a state to an entire continent is inherently complex, the viral maps effectively communicate the immense scale of Texas.
Conclusion
The viral maps comparing Texas to Europe are mostly accurate in their general message: Texas is indeed geographically vast and comparable in size to a significant portion of Europe. While these maps may slightly exaggerate Texas’s borders due to map projection distortions, they effectively highlight the Lone Star State’s impressive size. The expert analysis and official data confirm that Texas is a truly large territory, reinforcing the visual impact of these comparisons.
