As Hurricane Gustav bears down on the Gulf Coast, Google has added a “Hurricane Gustav” folder under the “Weather” folder in Google Earth. You can expand the folder to find the latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center, a forecast track (also from the NHC), and a set of webcams in and around Louisiana, provided by Weather Bonk.

Note: The “Clouds” layer in Google Earth is 1-3 hours behind “real time,” so the storm is actually farther ahead than it looks. The “Radar” layer should be accurate within 15-30 minutes of real-time.

For more detailed data on the approaching storm, including individual images from various satellites, load this KML into Google Earth, produced by the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey. The volunteer-run Gustav Information Center has embedded a map of Evacuation Centers & Routes on their site.

You can also track/get latest info from the following resources:

• Google meta-page to help recovery efforts and tracking: google.com/gustav_sept08.html
• Latest Gustav reports on Google News
• Tracking Hurricane Gustav and Hanna with Virtual Earth