what are these weird heatmap anomalies?

Virtual rides, maybe..? Just guessing though...

Hello ​@alex draves 

Thanks for pointing this out. The Strava Maps Team is looking into what could be causing those. If I get any further updates, I’ll be sure to share them here.

Sanity check - it’s not just you. I noticed them for the first time today as well and googled it. Your thread popped up. Very much still there!

I was about to begin my own thread on this, but I’ll add my thoughts here. I asked this directly to Strava support a few months ago and Bruce said pretty much what Jane did above: we don’t know.

Here’s what I deduced so far:

• This happens on the global ride heatmap. In my screenshots below it is set to “all cycle sports”
• The squares never seem to light up on the weekly heatmap (I live near an area with several)
• The squares correlate with areas that have high population density, but not necessarily high activity. For example Houston, Miami, and LA have dark maps from activities but are more spread out compared with the below. Newark, NJ is considered highly dense but doesn’t have as many activities.
• This appears to be a USA-only phenomenon; population centers internationally don’t have this. I checked Paris, London, Berlin, Mumbai, Tokyo, Taipei, Jakarta, and Singapore.
• The route builder won’t follow them. I add this because I have seen it accept a line that’s not displayed on the basemap but is obviously the way lots of people travel.

I don’t suppose Strava devs have god mode to view all activities to see where these come from?

A small gallery of screenshots where I found these anomalies:

Boston	Chicago	Chicago	DC area
Palo Alto	Pasadena	Philadelphia	Santa Monica
San Diego	Seattle	San Francisco	New York City (the most squares in an area I’ve found)