Galveston Island Post Hurricane Ike Imagery

For those of you interested in accessing data on Galveston Isl, post Hurricane Ike, NOAA has made available a vast collection of data including loads of imagery. See http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/ike/IKE0000.HTM or the homepage at http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/ike/. Data are 50 cm resolution imagery, SHP file downloads and World files with metadata are available. These are some of the best data I’ve come into where users can identify damaged properties for a pre-visit analysis. For some simply amazing imagery of Ike captured from the International Space Station see this page from NASA.

Aerial photography from NOAA

Hurricane Ike as seen from the Space Station… Amazing!

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TNRIS Tracking Hurricane Gustav via virtual Earth

TNRIS has a very nice web mapping service (powered via Microsoft Virtual Earth) showing users where Gustav is currently located – live doppler feed show the progress of the storm as it heads over Louisiana and into NE Texas – see the TNRIS hurricane season resources at http://www.tnris.org/EmergencyResponse.aspx

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Mashup maps Impact of Hurricane Gustav on oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico

Brian over at the Timoney group has share details of some work his team did over the labor-day week-end to help convey the impacts of hurricane Gustav on oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. the mashup shows natural gas, pipelines, platforms in the gulf along with data for each oil provider – See GulfImpact – the application is powered by Microsoft’s virtual Earth platform

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Hurricane Gustav GIS data, Imagery and path compared to Katrina

Wow, dejavu! Here we am almost 3 years to the day on a Sunday morning as I find myself searching around for some real-time imagery and data showing a major Hurricane headed towards the Louisiana Gulf Coast. Perhaps the quickest way to access imagery and graphics showing the path of Gustav is via WeatherUnderground. NOAA’s hurricane center is also a must-visit resource as is the NOAA NowCoast real-time webmapping service at http://nowcoast.noaa.gov/
Perhaps of interest to some of you is the GIS data product available from NOAA (SHP file) for storm surge probabilities (.ZIP) – see NOAA for latest data updates. For more image captures from Hurricane Gustav and Katrina see here.

Other relevant weblinks:

• http://hurricane.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes
• http://hurricane.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/viewer.html
• http://hurricane.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/query_expediter.html
• http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/history.shtml
• http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
• http://www.osei.noaa.gov/
• http://www.srh.noaa.gov/hgx/projects/allison01.htm
• Hurricane Evacuation zone maps
• Hurricane prepardeness
• http://www.giscorps.org/
• Track Flooding During Tropical Storm Gustav in Real-Time
• Preparing for the 2008 Hurricane Season

Hurricane Gustav as seen Sunday AM via NOAA Goes Imagery
GOEES Imagery from 2005 showing the well developed eye of Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Gustav path (Source: WeatherUnderground) Interesting as compared to the path that Hurricane Katrina took in 2005 (below)

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Weather Underground Hurricane-Tracking service

This morning online weather provider Weather Underground announced the
availability of a new Hurricane-Tracking service – Wundermap. WunderMap displays the current position, strength and movement of every tropical storm across the world that threatens to become a hurricane, typhoon or cyclone.
WunderMap displays: the current position, Dolly’s historical path, the storm’s projected path and strength. Currently, Tropical Storm Dolly’s path can be seen online at
www.wunderground.com/wundermap/hurricane .

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The Top Tornado Prone areas in the US

Wow, what happened to Kansas and Oklahoma?? Looks like Denver CO is topping the list this year from RiskMeter online. According to a report just released by the RiskMeter Online, the following top ten tornado prone metro-areas are as follows:

1.) Denver, CO*

2.) Houston, TX

3.) Miami, FL

4.) Hollywood, FL

5.) Tampa, FL

6.) Lincoln, IL

7.) Lakeland, FL

8.) Little Rock, AR

9.) Cape Coral, FL

10.) Oklahoma City, OK

*Not downtown, but a rural area to the northeast. See more info

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QuincyFloodInfo providesd information for the Mid-West flood of 2008

This comes to me from Shane in the Mid-west… Mid-West GIS, Inc, out of Quincy, Illinois recently developed the website www.QuincyFloodInfo.com in order to gather information for the flood of 2008 on one website. The site hosts weather, river gauge, photos, maps, archives, webcams, and contact information for assistance. During the crucial periods of the flood, more than 1,000 hits per day were being logged. It became a successful tool for many local residents, business owners, and government entities that needed updated information on a daily basis. It is the plan of Mid-West GIS, Inc. to use this same technology in the future for other disaster and emergency management issues. For more information you may contact Shane McDermott at shane@mid-westgis.com or (217) 222-7793.

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Midwest Residents Can Check Local River Forecast Levels and Assess Flood Risk

Weather Underground Mashup displays flood alerts for rivers across the United States. Announced today by Weatherunderground, this new web service alerts users of Flow Rate, Percentile, Current Stage, Forecast Stage and Flood Stage.
About the app… Using data from the USGS (the US Geological Survey), the product plots river data and forecasts on top of an interactive map. Users can scroll across the country and zoom in and out to view in-depth observations from all major rivers in the US. Alternatively, one can click an option to view only the rivers with current flood alerts. See www.wunderground.com/wundermap/rivers

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A tip – Weatherbug Severe Weather Alerts (mobile too)

I’m not sure about you but I’m getting tired of trying to keep tabs on the weather and more important, knowing if my area is under a severe weather alert (like a tornado). Chances are if you have the TV on or the radio you MIGHT get an alert. These are totally unreliable in my opinion though. Case in point, I have comcast for cable TV… I get interrupted for severe weather, sometimes, but the info alert is broken and sometimes not informative enough. And the radio… well, I’ll put it this way, a couple of weeks ago when a tornado ran by about 1.5 miles away from yours truly, the local radio station (which I had on) was playing music… ya thanks for that! Mindyou, I’m pretty much always on the PC or else I have my smartphone with me so it makes sense to have alerts via those mechanisms… enter WeatherBug. Jump there and you can download a free PC client (ad supported) and the service will load and inform you of severe updates. For mobile, a pay for service is available -this is an award winning service I believe – or it should be! See www.weatherbug.com

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Comms down for a bit and update from Windsor, CO tornado

Sorry about the lack of updates but my comcast has been down since yesterday and isn’t expected to be back up for a bit due to the tornado that hit about 1.5 mi east of where I am. All is cool, although the beautiful little town of Windsor, Colorado looks a total mess! Luckily loss of life was minimal here but people are pretty shaken up. Everyone seems to have a story, mine is that my wife was in a salon on Main St in Widsor huddled in a bathroom while the tornado passed and destroyed buildings about one block from where she was… needless to say she was pretty shaken from the experience. The car looks like it was parked on a driving range as a result of the hail… a few picks are posted on my flickr. Anyway, more to come later and indeed we have a renewed respect for the power of mother nature. Once again communications were a story around here as people turned to their mobiles to try and communicate with others around them. Later, hopefully I’ll be back up and running soon. Later… Thanks to all the emergency responders around here for doing a great job – this is an amazing community!

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