We're all trying here to find more information about the Gulf lighthouses that were affected by Hurricane Katrina. I was just sitting on the couch here, and glanced at a New York Times article. It was about people creating "overlays" for Google Earth of the Gulf area post-Katrina. People are using it to find out how their houses fared.

Here\'s the article.

This got me thinking...could we use this to check on our lighthouses? I can't right now, since Google Earth requires broadband access, something we don't have here on the OBX (driving me CRAZY! I wanna see the reunion photos!). There is some info in the article. Maybe we could make a "group effort" to check on all the lights?

An idea...it could work, it could fail...and it could become a groundbreaking idea that will be used throughout the lighthouse world. Send me the royalty cheques.

I have Google Earth, it doesn't show photo's frm after Katrina. Here's New Canal from Google Earth as of today.

Those views are at least three years old. I was looking thru some images and came upon Soldier Field in Chicago - before most of the big renovation work was done in 2002. Nice thought though.

Noooo....not the current maps that are preloaded. There are websites that allow you to download "updates" to the program that shows current views. People are taking the pictures released by the USGS or whoever, and overlaying them on the old maps to get the current view. That's where we'd see the lights.

I'll try it tommorow....GE won't even work here. It might be a long shot, but you never know.

I can't seem to find anything. Perhaps someone else will have better luck. http://earth.google.com/katrina.html

Saw this item on one of the TV news shows. Go to weather.gov and hit the link for Katrina pictures. This takes you to the NOAA websitefor some post storm shots:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2495.htm