How I’m Monitoring Hurricane Gustav from New Jersey
As long as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by the science behind tropical cyclones. My first memory of a hurricane was Gloria in 1985 when my family and I were evacuated to a shelter due to flooding concerns here in New Jersey. After that, I found myself tracking hurricanes on paper maps while watching the Weather Channel at 48 after every hour. Through advances in technology, it has been amazing to track hurricanes over the past few years. There’s now real time access to storm reports, forecasts, buoy information, and live photos and videos.
Here are some of the resources that I am using to monitor the storm from New Jersey:
- First is obviously the National Hurricane Center and the wealth of information they provide.
- The National Data Buoy Center is really interesting to look at. Their buoy data provides real time wave heights, water temperatures, wind speed, and air pressure. It is very interesting to watch the data as the storm progresses through the gulf.
- There are a lot of Google Earth overlays available from Google Earth Blog and Tropic Atlantic. The overlay that I finding the coolest is the near-real time tracking of the Hurricane Hunter aircraft and the data they send back to the NHC.
- Folks have set up a Gustav Information Center group at ning.com. This will compile Gustav information that is being posted on a variety of social networking sites. Also, don’t forget Twitter.
- Radio Reference is providing streaming feeds of emergency communications in New Orleans and San Antonio. Fascinating to listen to the evacuation communications from so far away. Their wiki also is also updated with information regarding amateur radio and emergency communications related to Hurricane Gustav.
My thoughts are with the people of the Gulf Coast and I hope that things with this storm go as smoothly as possible over the next few days.
