2 Years Ago: Hurricane Katrina

Two years ago today, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi making for the worst natural disaster in recent times. As the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans continue to rebuild, there are still lessons to be learned from Katrina and how coastal residents can prepare for the next "big one."

One of these lessons is to pay attention to warnings and statements issued by the National Hurricane Center and local National Weather Service offices. Those are government agencies that did an excellent job when it came to the storm. While some people may have said they were not prepared for the damage the storm could do, the National Weather Service did their job forecasting the storm in the days leading up to the landfall. Click here to read a dire warning issued by the New Orleans National Weather Service the day before landfall.

There are many websites with Hurricane Katrina information and the storm's aftermath. Here are a few I found interesting --

• Summary of Hurricane Katrina from the National Climate Data Center
• Hurricane Katrina page from NOAA
• Katrina page from NOLA.com

Luckily, the 2007 hurricane season has not compared to record breaking season of 2005. As I write this post Wednesday morning, there are no named storms in the Atlantic basin, but there are a couple of disturbances that we are watching.

One of those is just over 125 miles off the coast of Wilmington this morning. An area of low pressure has developed off the Carolina coast and is drifting south. Conditions are not favorable for tropical development in this area right now, but the National Hurricane Center says that could change over the next day or two. As of now, it appears this disturbance will continue to slowly move to the south and remain off the coast over the next few days.

The other disturbance we are watching is a tropical wave located between the African coast and the Lesser Antilles. This tropical wave is moving to the west and conditions could become favorable for tropical development in the day couple of days.

As always, we'll keep you posted with any changes in the tropics. For the very latest, tune in for our tropical update at :21 after the hour on News 14 Carolina.