Archived News |

March 9, 2001

ÃÛ½ÛÖ±²¥'s launches severe weather web site

A web site designed to help Louisianans more closely follow severe weather was unveiled at a Friday news conference by the University of Louisiana at Monroe's Atmospheric Sciences and Geography Programs, which is part of ÃÛ½ÛÖ±²¥'s Department of Geosciences.

The press conference was held at Hanna Hall on the ÃÛ½ÛÖ±²¥ campus.

In conjunction with Severe Weather Awareness Week, ÃÛ½ÛÖ±²¥ is launching the Severe Weather Web Site in cooperation with the Ouachita Civil Defense office to provide severe weather information to the general public and to those responsible for planning community responses to severe weather events.

The site allows visitors to view maps, graphs, tables and text that provide information about the distribution of damaging wind, hail, hurricane and tornado occurrences by parish and over time. Also available on the site are links which provide safety information in regard to severe weather events.

Located at http://www.ulm.edu/~geos/wx_home.htm, the site allows the user to interact with a geographic information system (GIS), to view data from specific events, or to gather numeric data about the likelihood of such occurrences parish by parish. It provides links to sites that have information about the current risk for severe weather and allows the user to download the data used in the study in a form compatible with ArcView GIS software.

Dr. Eric Pani, Professor in the Department of Geosciences at ÃÛ½ÛÖ±²¥ directed the meteorologic research on the project and Dr. Michael Camille, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences, was responsible for the GIS construction. Jamie Jernigan, an undergraduate student in ÃÛ½ÛÖ±²¥'s Geosciences, designed the web site.

The study was funded by Project Impact, Power-Up Inc., and the University of Louisiana at Monroe. The Storm Prediction Center of the National Weather Service provided data.

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