Hurricane Gustav **Updated**

I understand that this is a blog about geeks who are dads, and that a post on weather seems a touch off-subject.  However, I know we have readers living in the areas of the United States that are forecast to be affected by Hurricane Gustav.  I hoped a couple quick links to information and weather websites could help bring this back on topic.

UPDATE: we’re going to gather some additional relevant links to the storm and will update at the bottom of the posting.

Because I have family, friends, and acquaintances that live along the
Gulf of Mexico, and because I grew up there having to prepare for hurricanes, I take a keen interest in the weather whenever a hurricane threatens.  For me, the best weather resource on the web is the Weather Underground. 

In general, they give you the weather in an easy to understand format allowing you to go into as much detail as you like. For tropical weather in particular, when there is a tropical storm or hurricane they have a great set of graphs, forecasts, charts, and models.
Think of it as an aggregator of all the weather feeds on the storm.
Here’s the one for Gustav.
There’s another for Tropical
Storm Hanna.

I’m imagining that Louisiana and Mississippi coastal residents aren’t reading this blog right now as both states have sections that are under mandatory evacuation.  I’ve already had calls this early Sunday morning from friends and family who are packing up, prepping their houses, and moving out.  Louisiana is forecast to take the brunt of the storm, and with Katrina’s landfall just three years ago, there are significant changes to how they’ve prepared for this storm.  You can see the preparations on the Louisiana website.  Mississippi is taking similar measures and assisting the evacuation of Louisiana along with their own residents.  UPDATE: as the storm track changes, Texas is also looking to be in the path of the storm – they’ve updated the emergency preparedness section of the State of Texas website.

For those in the path of this storm, our thoughts are with you.  Be safe. Take care of yourselves, and drop me a line when things calm down.  I’d love to hear your story.

Here are some established links and some that are more recent:

• FEMA Hurricane Gustav (much improved since Katrina)
• Red Cross Social Media (Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and more)
• Gustav Information Center (A Ning group getting up and running)
• Hurricane Gustav Resources (More info coming together)
• The Weather Nerd (for us Weather Geeks, he’s a good one to follow)
• StormPulse API (for embedding updated maps on your website)
• More as warranted

Image from
wunderground.com

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