Source: comScore Networks

Not surprisingly, the devastation caused by Katrina brought a virtual halt to online connectivity in cities hit by the storm.

- On the average weekday in the week preceding the storm, approximately 700,000 people used the Internet in New Orleans. On Monday, August 29, that number dropped more than 80 percent below that level. By the following day that decline had reached 90 percent.

- In the Biloxi-Gulfport area, Internet traffic exceeded 160,000 users on the average weekday during the preceding week. On August 29, that number fell by more than 75 percent, and by the following day online activity had fallen below reportable levels.

- The number of Americans offering a helping hand is evidenced by soaring traffic to RedCross.org. On August 31, nearly 1 million people visited the site, more than 32 times the average number of daily visitors from August 22-26.

- Americans turned to the Internet for the latest weather information as the storm approached. WeatherBug drew more than 9.9 million visitors on August 29th, while The Weather Channel (weather.com) saw 9 million visitors on August 29.

- 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.