• by September 2, 2005

The online data related to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is pouring in from every possible direction today. Here are a few important nuggets for your consideration:

comScore Networks reports that for the average weekday in the week preceding the storm, approximately 700,000 people used the Internet in New Orleans. Not surprisingly, on Monday, August 29, that number dropped more than 80 percent below the average level. By Aug. 30, that decline had reached 90 percent.

Traffic to RedCross.org. on August 31 reached nearly 1 million people, more than 32 times the average number of daily visitors from August 22 to 26, according to comScore. The online data research also reports that WeatherBug drew more than 9.9 million visitors on August 29th, while The Weather Channel (Weather.com) saw 9 million visitors on August 29.

Finally, comScore reports that more than 1.7 million online searches were conducted on August 29 containing the words "Hurricane" and/or "Katrina," a more than tenfold increase over the daily average of 143,000 searches during the five days ending August 26, 2005.

Today, we hear that Nielsen//NetRatings' Daily Overnight Analysis reports that traffic to RedCross.org surged 184 percent overnight, attracting more than 1.1 million people on Wednesday, August 31, versus 390,000 unique visitors on Tuesday, August 30. By contrast, RedCross.org saw 1.1 million unique visitors during the entire month of December 2004 in response to the tsunami disaster, which grew to more than 2 million in January 2005.

Nielsen reports that traffic to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Web site grew 402 percent in a Monday-to-Monday daily traffic comparison. NOAA.gov, which posted updates and aerial photos of the outlying hurricane areas, attracted more than 3.2 million unique visitors on Monday, August 29, compared to 640,000 unique site visitors a week prior.

And, Nielsen data shows that the sites of Advance Internet drew 1.4 million people on Monday Aug. 29 due to its NOLA.com site, followed by ABCNews Digital (1.1 million unique visitors), and MSNBC.com (6.5 million) to comprise the fastest growing Monday-to-Monday daily traffic rise. Each of these Web destinations saw triple-digit growth. WorldNow and Fox News rounded out the top five sites, jumping 95 percent and 84 percent to 1.1 million and 2 million unique visitors, respectively, according to Nielsen.

Of course the Weather Channel and AccuWeather featured dedicated sections to Hurricane Katrina coverage which drove 7.7 million and 961,000 unique visitors to the sites in a week-over-week comparison, garnering 73 percent and 55 percent in respective growth.

On Wednesday, the Minute cited awesome editorial coverage on MSNBC.com. Let's not forget CNN and CNN.com though. You can't count them out, not by a long shot. Consider these statistics: As of noon September 1, CNN received more than 10,000 e-mails from citizen journalists. More than 600 of those submissions included either video or images. And on Aug. 31, CNN.com reports that it racked up 15.7 million video plays of its Hurricane Katrina coverage over the Monday-Tuesday period. This number can be compared to the 3.8 million video plays served on July 7, the day of the terrorist bombings in London.

Now finally, for anyone who might have been confused by the Minute's 1980s reference to "Katrina and the (Devastating) Waves," the reference comes from the band of the same name: "Katrina and the Waves," which had the one-hit wonder, "I'm Walking on Sunshine." Remember it? I do. It also accompanied commercials. Nobody in the Gulf Coast region will be walkin' on sunshine for weeks, but we hope you will be, wherever your travels take you this Labor Day weekend.

The Minute, well, she's going to relax... we hope. Have fun wherever you are.