I’ve pointed before to Wikipedia as a great source of information about disasters, natural or otherwise, and already that seems to be true with Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, this looks to be a pretty catastrophic event in the making, and as we’ve been watching the tv coverage of the event and trying to school our kids on hurricanes in general, Wikipedia has provided answers to a lot of their questions. What does Category 5 mean? How does this hurricane compare to others in history? What causes an eye to form? I’m seriously past the point of wondering whether or not the information I’m getting from the site is correct, and I’m also past Googling a lot of these questions which is what I used to do. I just added the latest information on the strength of the hurricane right after I heard it on CNN, and I’m already amazed by the information that’s been collected on this storm. Even now, before the storm hits, it’s getting 30-40 edits an hour. It will be interesting to watch it over the next few days. I’m sure there will be all sorts of photos and videos added soon.
And how else can we follow this storm? Well, Katrina hasn’t made Flickr’s tag cloud, yet. But I’m betting it will. Already, 1,044 photos are up. If your teaching hurricanes, time to add that feed to your aggregator. Oh, and don’t forget the NOAA Hurricane Center feed. And, of course the local press feeds that are coming from the area. And of course, you need to follow what the bloggers are saying.
Amazing the new ways in which we can gather information these days. TV is nice for the immediacy, but it can’t possibly match the range that we have at our disposal now.
Sending our good thoughts southward…
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