'Weather nerd' in Indiana warned New Orleans mayor

By Andrew Adam Newman
- The New York Times -

"One of the earliest and perhaps clearest alarms about Hurricane Katrina's potential threat to New Orleans was sounded not by the Weather Channel or a government agency but by a self-described weather nerd sitting on a couch in Indiana with a laptop computer and a remote control."

The source, here. Brendan´s website, a 23 year old student, and a weather aficionado, already knew Katrina was going to hit.
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Information is power, and it´s up to you how you use it. How is it possible Brendan knew all this, and top officials didn´t? As I suspect they *knew*, but it was not in their (monetary) interest to do anything about it. Too risky? Or simply a nasty case of economics?

Brendan´s blog, here, and his call-out, here (long page). Well done, kid. :)

******** added comments:
This photo. It is sad, almost devastating, to recognise a place in the world i´ve been and enjoyed, knowing now what´s happened.

Tonight i have been travelling through time - the last week or so - with my cable connection. On the many tabs of my Firefox, I had the Weather report channels, the diary of a girl who didn´t want to leave New Orleans, Brendan´s diary telling the horror minute by minute, reports going back to 2002 telling of exactly this worst case scenario, Google earth showing me the devastation, news channels (official and alternative) from around the world, and the unofficial blogs and photos from the people themselves.

It is odd. I feel I have gone back in time and relieved the week through the window of my computer. I could have never done that before in the past; not even a year ago.

We have the time machine.