Its no meteorological understatement to say that Hurricane Katrina was thebig onein the Big Easy.

The Category 5 storm washed over levees to inundate New Orleans, while washing away whole communities up and down the Gulf Coast.

How hurricanes behave on land and sea is the subject of a talk by West Virginia Universitys Dr. J. Steven Kite at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, in the Gold Room of the Towers Residential Complex.

Kite is a geologist who also studies such storms and their wakes, including floods and landslides. His talk closes out a lecture series by WVU s Office of Service Learning Programs staged to look at life in America, post-Katrina.

The three speakers before Kite focused on the storm of emotions and reactions that hit during and after the hurricane, from WVU medical professionals who were both poised and stressed as they scrambled to establish an emergency medical clinic at Camp Dawson; to a professor fleeing Katrinas fury with her child; to the collective plight of the post-traumatic stress disorder victims who are sure to surface for months and even years ahead.

Kites talk will bring the discussion back around to the weather event that Katrina was, said Franchesca Nestor, the Office of Service Learning associate who coordinated the lecture series.

Katrina was just �€~acting naturally,Nestor said,even if New Orleans as a ghost town was about unnatural as it gets for us. But Mother Nature always gets the last word, and Dr. Kites going to tell us what that word is Thursday night.

Kite earned a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin and also holds degrees from the University of Maine and James Madison University.

For more information on other community outreach programs at WVU , call Nestor in the Office of Service Learning Programs at 304-293-8761, ext. 4482.