Almost 2 million residents along the Lousiana coast have evacuated the region as Hurricane Gustav is expected to hit today. After his mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin revealed he would be staying in the city, sleeping in City Hall. Nagin also warned, "Looters will go directly to jail. You will not get a pass this time. You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You will go directly to the......

Design by João Sequeira, with Ana Figueiredo, Marta Moreira, and Pedro Ferreira, of Lisbon, Portugal Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City Office of Emergency Management have announced 10 winners in the contest to design temporary housing for the thousands of New Yorkers who might be displaced in the event of a catastrophe, like a direct hit from a Category 3 hurricane. The 117 submissions from 30 countries had to create quickly assembled housing for......

What’s worth watching on food-TV this week? We're definitely setting our DVR to record The Martha Stewart Show. She’s got a three great New York Italian chefs on today: Odetta Fada of San Domenico, Lidia Bastianich of Felidia and Del Posto, and pastry chef Gina DePalma of Babbo. On Tuesday she’s got cookbook editor Judith Jones, and on Wednesday, New Orleans chef Susan Spicer (Monday-Friday, 1pm, NBC). But the prime time highlight might be a......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn, a high-angle rescue on West 18th St., in Manhattan, and a multi-vehicle accident on Farmers Blvd. and the South Conduit in Queens. Hoboken mayor David Roberts was apparently prescient to ask how many stops his SWAT team made on the trip back north--fearing more embarrassing photos of his police force as they returned from relief efforts after hurricane Katrina. Additional pictures of......

Hoboken disbanded its SWAT team this week after another scandal rocked the police department of the tiny New Jersey town across the river. A number of minority officers recently filed a lawsuit accusing a high-ranking co-worker of behaving like a white supremacist, regularly deriding minorities. Now the SWAT team has been disbanded days after photos became public showing the unit's commander and other cops cavorting with waitresses at a Hooters restaurant in Alabama. The Mile......

It's a tie! Last month managed to tie 1947 as the warmest October in the 150+ years of Central Park weather observations. The last time the park had a record warm month was February 2002. The difference between sharing the record warm October with 1947 and breaking that old record was as small as could be. If the high or low temperature for any day last month been one degree higher October 2007 would......

Anthony Bourdain has repeatedly professed his undying affection for Fergus Henderson’s roasted marrow bones with parsley salad, and even considers the British chef to be his “favorite food person.” For eaters who willingly choose seared squab hearts over heart-healthy turkey burgers, Henderson’s offal-heavy cookbook The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating is considered a classic. It contains recipes such as Blood Cake with Fried Eggs, Tripe Gratin, and Crispy Pig’s Tail. Stuff like that. This......

Giving Proper Credit to CBS 2 and Scott Weinberger Scott Weinberger's exclusive reports this week on security guards sleeping like Homer Simpson at the Peach Bottom Nuclear Plant just outside of Philadelphia were an eye opener, since a major catastrophic event there could have its effects felt over a hundred miles away. Plus the same company, Wackenhut, is also under contract to the federal government to provide security. Thanks to Weinberger's three month investigation and......

Why leave all the disaster scenarios to Hollywood or non-fiction TV programming (like the scary East Coast Tsunami program on the History Channel)? New York City, along with the Rockefeller Foundation and Architecture for Humanity New York has created a design competition for "Post-Disaster Provisional Housing." According to the What If NYC website, the Big Apple is considered among the top three cities in the United States vulnerable to the destructive effects of storm......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a home invasion robbery on 11th St. in Brooklyn, an unusual rescue on Selwyn Ave. in the Bronx, and a shooting on Rugby Rd. and Foster Ave. in Brooklyn. The 30-year-old homeless man charged with raping and torturing a Columbia student in her apartment in April was found mentally fit to stand trial. Negotiations between Thor Equities and several Coney Island boardwalk tenants are nearly settled, allowing many attractions......

A week ago, Gothamist was rhetorically asking if our days of 80-degree weather were behind us until next spring. Now it is looking like we will have at least one more warm spell before fall sets in. That got us to wondering what the latest days were that Central Park reached 80 or 90 degrees. We churned through the daily temperature data from 1971 to the present to plot the graph above. The latest......

We were tempted this morning to throw up a pretty sky photo from the Gothamist Contribute pool and not write anything because there's not much weather to discuss. The week is starting out cool but will get warmer. By Thursday we should be seeing maximum temperatures in the upper-70s to around 80 degrees as the high pressure system that will dominate the weather this week moves further eastward. Skies are expected to stay mostly clear......

Today's weather forecast features an exciting race between the remnants of surprising Hurricane Humberto and the Canadian Crusher, a massive, cool, dry air mass that has already captured the Great Plains and is quickly moving our way. Humberto, who reminded everyone that there's still a lot to learn about tropical storms, intensified from a tropical depression to a full-fledged hurricane in only 14 hours, is now just a big mess of moisture centered over northern......

One reason for the unpredictability of a hurricane is that the storm gets big enough to perturb its surrounding environment. When that happens you get a contest of equals in the atmosphere, the tropical system can start to deform the atmospheric around it, and the outcome is uncertain. That didn't happen with relatively weak Tropical Depression Gabrielle. She briefly intensified to tropical storm status, but weakening after touching the Carolina coast she never had the......

Two types of tropical weather will be the weather story to watch out for over the next several days. You may have noticed that this morning is much more humid than in the past few days. The humidity and warmer air are courtesy of the large high pressure system that has finally moved offshore. The southerly flow of air around the backside of that high pressure system will bring us a day or two of......

The string of pleasant, if not all that meteorologically interesting, weather continues today with another sunny, mild day. More of the same is expected tomorrow, though the mercury may crack the 80 degree mark. The Weather Service has finally come to their senses and backed off their earlier prediction of highs around 90 on Friday and Saturday. They are currently calling for highs around 86, which is more in line with weather.com's predictions of the......

The weather has gotten into the Labor Day spirit and decided not to work this week. Tomorrow will be a near-repeat of today. A weak cold front will cool us down slightly midweek. Highs on Wednesday and Thursday will be in the upper-70s. It should be warmer by the end of the week when the center of a high pressure system sits to our east. The National Weather Service says it will warm up......

Today is the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's appearance in New Orleans. The storm eventually killed more than 1,600 people in Louisiana and Mississippi and raised many questions about infrastructure of levees and the federal response. President Bush spoke in New Orleans today (text here) where the Times-Picayune printed an editorial asking the President to treat New Orleans fairly: "Nobody wants to have to compete for disaster relief. But that is what Louisianians have......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: America at a Crossroads: Anti-Americans (A Hate/Love Relationship) (Monday, 10:00 P.M., WNET 13) A look at the Europeans love/hate relationship with the United States. Live From New York: The First 5 Years of Saturday Night Live (Tuesday, 8:00 P.M., WNBC 4) Two hours of classic SNL sketches and interviews with the performers who created them in this rebroadcast of this retrospective. Wide Angle: The Dying Fields (Tuesday,......

There are a lot of obscure weather and climate statistics and records. Two of Gothamist's favorites are the record low high temperature and the record high low temperature. Yesterday we had one of the former. The combination of being in a cold air mass and under heavy cloud cover also tied 1911 (WCBS didn't give the exact date) as having the lowest high temperature of any day in August. More fun facts! The high was......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a possible abduction on West 15th St. and Surf Ave. in Brooklyn, a water main break on Broadway in Manhattan, and an escaped prisoner at Bainbridge St. and Rockaway in Brooklyn. Jamaican-New Yorkers were worrying about friends, relatives, and countrymen as Hurricane Dean was bearing down on the island nation. Fortunately, Jamaica escaped the full brunt of the storm. Emily "Pemmy" du Pont Frick feels that its "a tragedy"......

Hurricane Dean continues to gain strength as it heads toward the Yucatán peninsula. The hurricane, with sustained winds of 150 miles an hour, may intensify to a category 5 storm before it hits land tomorrow. Dean is currently expected to cross the Yucatán near the Mexico-Belize border, where it will weaken, then regain strength over the Bay of Campeche before slamming into northern Mexico. The storm passed a hundred miles south of Jamaica and the......

This afternoon's temperature has been bouncing up and down as the sun struggles to come out behind the cruddy clouds. This morning's clouds were leftover from a bit of convective activity to our south last night. A line of showers is approaching the city from the west. Some of those showers may be intense, as they hit the city later this afternoon and into the evening. A high pressure system behind today's cold front will......

Another sunny and mild day is on tap for today. The wind has shifted to come out of the southwest ahead of an approaching cold front. The wind shift means we'll see slightly warmer, with a high close to 90, slightly more humid air today. The front is weak and there's not much moisture associated with it so we should stay dry until tomorrow. Tomorrow will see a stronger cold front approaching in the......

So, last week's weather featured intense rain that shut down the subway system, a tornado skipping through Staten Island and Brooklyn, an unbearably steamy afternoon, and a couple days of near-record low temperatures. This week's weather should feature, uh… uh… well, not much of anything other than warm, sunny days. If you haven't already seen it the Brooklyn Daily Eagle has a nice, but small, map of the tornado path. First touching down on Staten......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Clarkson Ave. in Brooklyn, another shooting on Madison Ave. in Manhattan, and a pedestrian fatally struck on Cross Bay Blvd. in Queens. 1010 WINS conducted an online poll asking "If a hurricane were to hit NYC, do you think the city would be ready?" 84% of respondents answered "Oh heck no -- look what happened Wednesday." Chicago police arrested the four men who allegedly bound and......

Photographs of frustrated subway riders by md76 on Flickr While this morning's commute seems better, most mass transit riders are still confused, frustrated and even betrayed by the subway system and other rail service coming to a stand still during the Wednesday morning rush hour. The MTA admitted that the service was not acceptable on many accounts, from the flooding to the fact that the MTA's website was overwhelmed. Then there's also the fact......

Today's morning subway and bus commute should be a lot smoother (unless you need to stop at Grand Central) than yesterday's messy commute. There were a number of subway disruptions and diversions due to flooding from the rain, which left many straphangers frustrated. But why did pouring rain stop the subway? Well, here's what the MTA says:NYC Transit utilized portable pumps and pump trains to help clear 600 feet of 2-foot-deep water across all four......

Category 7 for ABC 7’s Bill Evans WABC’s Bill Evans is the latest local news talent to author a disaster novel about the city with his book “Category 7”, which he co-authored with Marianna Jameson. The book is the story about a man made hurricane heading towards New York. The book shouldn’t be confused with the 2005 made for TV movie Category 7: The End of the World, which was also about a deadly storm.......

Switcharoo at CBS 2 This week, veteran anchors Jim Rosenfield and Dana Tyler, who were anchoring at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., switched newscasts with Chris Wragge and Kristine Johnson, who were anchoring the noon and 5 p.m. We think that moving younger talent to the higher profile 11 p.m. newscast is probably an attempt to get some younger viewers. Channel 2 has been the least stable of the local newscasts over the past ten......