It’s been hot as hell here in Dallas for the last month. We’ve hit over 100 degrees several days in a row and I just saw the forecast for this week – 9 days straight with above 103 degree temperatures. No thank you. I hate this. Hate it.

James and I went to my Mom’s (Broken Arrow, OK) in June and we had an awesome severe storm come our way one morning and I taped it with a 1080 HD Sanyo Xacti video cam. This video brings me comfort and peace.

Feel free to watch this in FULL SCREEN by putting your mouse over the video and clicking on the square (full screen) at the bottom of the video.

Those of us who live in the Big D know that when a snowflake falls here, it’s a big deal. How I miss my days in Tulsa, OK when it would snow at least 3 times a winter. Not so much here in Dallas.

Nonetheless, the forecasters said we may get some “freezing drizzle.” Little do they know…

As you know, I am a huge weather geek and although I wish no harm on anyone, hurricanes literally mesmorize me and we have a huge hurricane coming! My city, Dallas, will even be in the storm’s angry path!

Here’s the 7pm CST update for Hurricane Ike which is now a category 3 storm (barely, just hit 111 mph).

Here’s the latest and greatest updates from the National Hurricane Center as well as the National Weather Service in New Orleans. New Orleans has already had a few “squalls” (AKA bands of rain) hit the downtown area with 44mph wind gusts and it hasn’t even officially hit New Orleans yet.

As of 10:00pm CST, the forecasted track is for New Orleans to be in the “right quadrant” of the hurricane, which is NOT where you want to be (the storm surge and winds are more destructive to the east of the hurricane’s eye).

As of 10:05pm CST, the storm is 400 miles wide (yes, 400 miles!), winds are up to 115mph (Category 3 storm) and is expected to slam into the US by Monday morning (9am to 12:00pm). The remains of the hurricane are expected to literally flood East Texas to Dallas, TX.

The forecasted track of Gustav remains the same as earlier, however it’s important to know that a hurricane has a mind of its own and can and will change direction often and without much notice.

More to come tomorrow morning… it’s been a long, long day and I’m exhausted. Hopefully, the three of you who read this will gain some education/awareness from it. GOOD NIGHT!

Previous Updates/Radar/Graphics of Gustav

As some of you know, I’m a self-renowned weather geek and I love weather and storms. I do not love the destruction, though and unfortunately, as each minute passes by on this Sunday, Hurricane Gustav looks to be more and more menacing to the Louisiana coast.

As you can see here, the latest hurricane satellite imagery and track (as of Sunday, 2:00pm CST) is a direct hit to New Orleans and the LA coastal border as well as far east Texas.

The other weather news item besides Hurricane Gustav is the tropical storm Hannah near Bermuda. Most weather forecast models are predicting this to become a hurricane which could threaten the South East US coast. Not a good week for hurricanes my friends.

Continue to check here for the latest updates on Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Hannah.

Maybe only weather geeks will love this, but I don’t care… I’m going to write about it anyway. So Deco and I are sitting on my couch watching the History Channel about the American Revolution when all of a sudden I heard the loudest BANG. It is the 4th of July, but it’s 3:00pm so I thought that it surely wasn’t a firecracker. What was it?

An unexpected thunderstorm! I know, nothing exciting, right? Well, to me it is. Considering Dallas has had a heat wave the last few weeks with almost no rain, this was a nice lil’ surprise. And what a natural contradiction… sun and rain?! I love it! Happy Indepdendence Day!

So I was watching Tekzilla’s latest podcast last night and the host, Patrick Norton, brought up a website that immediately caught my interest. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a weather geek and LOVE satellite pictures, radar pictures, etc.

So with that said, I want to share with you a new application I just purchased. EarthDesk is a real time desktop application that shows the earth in real-time. As the creator of EarthDesk states, “EarthDesk replaces your Macintosh desktop picture or Windows wallpaper with a stunning dynamic image of our planet continuously updating in the background while you work.”

What this includes is real-time satellite pictures of the earth in all of its glory. You can see where the moon is currently shining, where there’s daylight and you can have it update within one minute so you can track the sun’s rays (in real satellite images) as it goes across the horizon. It’s simply amazing.

There are a lot of other really cool settings with this application, but you can read all of them at the company’s website which is here.