Hurricane Isaac, Amateurs Keeping Watch, WX Utilities

By now you’ve all heard that Hurricane Isaac is following the path of Hurricane Katrina, the weather event that devastated New Orleans Louisiana and surrounding states in 2005. In subsequent years of weather watching and tracking these tropical storms I’ve used various web sites and utilities to keep abreast of these impending storms.

I use Earth Alerts to follow any and all disasters to befall mankind short of the Apocalypse. The program is all inclusive in that it tracks earthquakes, volcanoes, tropical storms, hurricanes, tsunamis and wildfires. It does it all. Here’s a screen shot of the program; click on it for a larger view.

The program integrates nicely with Google Earth and provides for automatic download of weather overlays for Google Earth. Make sure you have the latest version of Google Earth installed. Earth Alerts can be downloaded free of charge from here. It requires some configuration but it’s very straightforward. There’s also a web based Earth Alerts available. It uses Google Earth generated maps for displaying disaster information.

The Weather Channel has an excellent graphics driven storm tracker and it’s one of my favourites too. Click here for the latest progress of Hurricane Isaac.

In closing I want to remind all amateurs of the comms and relief efforts in progress on the amateur bands. The ARRL posted some updated information a few hours ago at this link:

Hams in Delta Division Prepare for Hurricane Isaac

And this is from the blog of K5JAW:

Hurricane Watch Net/ 14.325 (www.HWN.org)

The Mississippi Emergency Net will activate at 12:00 Noon

Technorati Tags: Amateur Radio,VE3MPG

CDST on Tuesday, August 28. This is a joint operation between the Magnolia Section Net and the Mississippi Section Phone Net. Daily operation will begin at 6:00 am and continue until 10:00 pm or later if activity warrants. The frequencies will be 7238 (day) and 3.862 (night). The shift between bands will be at the discretion of the Net Manager and/or NCS. This net will primarily handle Health-and-Welfare traffic and other issues related to Isaac. A moratorium on inbound H/W traffic may be declared if it is obviously impossible to deliver the traffic due to storm damage. 

The Delta Division ARES EMCOMM Net will activate at 12:00 Noon on Tuesday, August 28, on a 24 Hour basis. The frequencies will be 7.275 (day) and 3.890 (night). The shift between bands will be at the discretion of the Net Manager and/or NCS. This net will primarily handle Tactical Traffic. KM5EMA (MEMA) will be on this frequency beginning at 1:00 pm CDST. 

There may be periods on these Nets when there are relatively long period of silence. Please help to keep the Net frequency clear. If you wish to rag chew, please make arrangements and move off frequency. If a net frequency is in use by others tune either side to find the Hurricane Net operation.

That’s it for today.