Social Media and the 2010 Hurricane Season

Hurricane season is here and with an extremely active several months expected ahead, you can be sure social media will play a huge role in disseminating critical storm-related information.

Social media has as history of helping people find friends and relatives after several high-profile disasters, such as the tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And now in 2010, as millions upon millions of U.S. residents and tourists will at some point this season likely be in harms way as a tropical cyclone barrels itself towards our coastlines, everyone from emergency managers and hurricane forecasters, to traditional media and bloggers (such as The Northeast Quadrant), will use these means to increase their reach.

In fact, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) plans, at the very least, to create a Facebook page by the end of this month. For those who sign up, you can expect to receive up-to-the-minute storm advisories, watches and warnings, as well as evacuation orders and safety tips. The page will also serve as a portal to post photos, videos and storm reports.

So what about Twitter? For the time being, the NHC says it is steering clear of it because the 140-character limit is not enough space to provide enough information (don't we all know that is true)!

Related blog spot: Severe Weather with a Chance of Tweets!

Severe Weather with a Chance of Tweets!

The National Weather Service (NWS) is now looking to weather spotters like us to report severe weather via "tweets" on Twitter.

The NWS is most interested in reports of large-scale weather events such as snowfall, severe weather and flooding, and anyone with a Twitter account can participate. Weather tweeters are asked to briefly describe the event, when it occurred, and where if the person doesn't have geotagging capability. Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification data to various media such as photographs, video, websites, etc.

The NWS says one of the greatest benefits to using Twitter for weather reports is the capability of geotagging the location of a tweet. During last week's severe thunderstorms that stretched through several Southern states, three tornadoes were confirmed with tweets. One showed a photo of a touchdown in Howardwick, Texas.

To post a weather tweet that's accessible by the NWS, you'll take one of two steps:

1. For those without the geotagging option, you'll log into your Twitter account via the Web or mobile device and submit the tweet in the following format: #wxreport WW your location WW your significant weather report.

2. For those with geotagging, first make sure the function is turned on and then submit the tweet as follows: #wxreport your significant weather report.

For more information on weather tweets and how to access such reports for your area, visit www.weather.gov/stormreports.