| HOME | Follow the weather online and be prepared By JIM BROOKS If the storms that have rattled the area recently have you been keeping you glued to the TV and away from the computer, there are some Web sites that can keep you updated on the weather. One of the best weather sites with an ag-viewpoint is found online at the UK Agricultural Weather Center at wwwagwx.ca.uky.edu. The site is a comprehensive one, offering ag weather reports and information. You can save yourself a few mouse clicks by finding the appropriate county weather data (Select the home page link titled "Kentucky Agricultural Weather Information link," select "County Weather and Climate Synopsis," then scroll down and select your county and click again. Once there, you can set your bookmark on your Web browser. There's a huge amount of weather info at the site. Beside statewide weather, you'll find links to radar images, weather data from schools around the state, general info about weather, a complete weather almanac, yearly totals and ag-specific data. And those UK Ag Weather guys are doing something right -- the site received more than 6 million hits in the past year. • I can probably blame WAVE-TV weather man Bill Gladden for introducing me to weather radar images a long time ago. But in the years since, more people than yours truly have come to rely on radar images. Weather radar serves as a visual indicator of what's happening in the skies overhead, and what conditions may be headed your way. One of my favorite sites for radar imagery is Intellicast, where you can view both regional radar and the high-tech NEXRAD weather radar. The menu at the link, http://www.intellicast.com/weather/sdf/, will take you to the Louisville forecast section of the Intellicast Web site. There'll you'll find a complete set of links to whatever data you need -- including both radar and NEXRAD, as well as satellite images and more. • The WHAS-TV 11 Storm Team posts live Doppler and NEXRAD radar images on the station's Web site at www.whas11.com. Click on the "Storm Team" button in the top menu and you'll find a complete roundup of the local weather conditions, forecast, and Doppler and NEXRAD image thumbnails at the bottom of the Web page are actually links to take you to larger views of each radar. And lastly, if you had asked me 10 years ago if I would've repeated watched a cable TV channel that broadcast nothing but weather information, I would have laughed. But the laugh is on me -- and millions of other people who are now regular viewers of The Weather Channel. Besides their cable channel, the guys at the Weather Channel were pioneers in Web site design, and they still spend work hard to make it easy to find the information you want. Go to their home page (www.weather.com), and you'll see a spot on the upper left side of the Web page to enter your zip code. With that information entered, you click the "Go" button, and the Web site zips you to your local weather data and forecasts, with links to local Doppler, regional Doppler and satellite images. The site is quick and easy to navigate through; for quick info, it can't be beat. SHACK ONLINE. The nation's largest consumer electronics company is putting its wares online in a big way. Radio Shack, a division of the Tandy Corp., will be unveiling a comprehensive consumer electronics Web site this fall. The site, www.radioshack.com, will sell TVs, stereos, computers, electronic parts and equipment. The site will eventually offer more than 30,000 items -- which is even more than 10 times as many products as Radio Shack's "real world" stores. The Web site will compliment the company's chain of more than 7,000 stores. To help promote the new Web site, Radio Shack retailers will be set up with digital subscriber line (DSL) connections where available to give their sales reps access to the site. Look for the site this fall at www.radioshack.com. Comments and questions about this column may be sent to jbrooks@myoldkentuckyhome.com, or visit www.myoldkentuckyhome.com on the World Wide Web. | HOME |