The Irish Trojan's Blog

Brendan Loy, a second-year law student at Notre Dame, began blogging in 2002, writing about football (his blog, named The Irish Trojan's Blog, combines Notre Dame's football team, the Fighting Irish, with that of his college team, the Trojans of the University of Southern California), his cats, his dog, his fiancée Becky, the Red Sox, politics, "The Lord of the Rings" and weather.

It's his blogging about the weather lately that has garnered attention in the blogosphere and in the New York Times, especially this prescient post about Hurricane Katrina:

"At the risk of being alarmist, we could be 3-4 days away from an unprecedented cataclysm that could kill as many as 100,000 people in New Orleans," Brendan Loy, who is 23 and has no formal meteorological training, wrote on Aug. 26 in his blog, irishtrojan.com. "If I were in New Orleans, I would seriously consider getting the hell out of Dodge right now, just in case."

Mr. Loy's posting that Friday afternoon came three days before the hurricane struck and two days before the mayor of New Orleans, Ray C. Nagin, issued an evacuation order. Posts over the next several days, in aggregate, seem now like an eerie rewriting of the tale of Chicken Little, in which the sky does in fact fall.

In the cooperative and competitive world of blogs, Mr. Loy's has gotten some serious praise. Mickey Kaus, whose kausfiles blog is featured on Slate.com, wrote on Friday that "Loy's blog for the past week is a pretty extraordinary document," adding that "it should maybe be in the Smithsonian, if you can put a blog in the Smithsonian."

Brendan's seen a lot of traffic at his blog today, and he took the opportunity to add his own postscript to the New York Times article, a follow-up to a press report that only a blogger can do. Check it out.

And take a look at The Irish Trojan Hurricane Katrina Wiki where Brendan aggregates links on the topic so he can take back his blawg from Katrina and get back to his school work. After all, he's on his way to the Supreme Court of the United States. He doesn't yet have the qualifications to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, but there might be an opportunity for Brendan Loy as the head of FEMA.