Storm Reports via Twitter Project By Tim Brice WFO El Paso April 29, 2010

Overview Twitter 101 What do the tweeters do? What does the NWS do? How to promote the project New hashtags

What is Twitter? According to Twitter, Twitter is: “ “without a doubt the best way to share and discover what is happening right now.” Perhaps a less biased description of Twitter would: “Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets.” - Wikipediasocial networking microblogging

What is a Tweet? It is a 140 character (or less) message that a user (tweeter) sends out that is posted on their Twitter home page and also sent to the tweeter’s subscribers called followers? Tweets can include: A simple text message Links to a picture Links to a web page

Twitter Demo

Media and Twitter Directly communicate with public Tweet forecasts Tweet storm tracks/watch/warning info Advertise your weather cast Helps to stay in contact with EM’s/NWS Tweet weather facts Answer weather questions Receive weather reports from the public

Storm Reports via Twitter

NWS and Twitter The National Weather Service wants to tap into this army of weather enthusiasts (trained and untrained) who use Twitter and give them a quick easy way to transmit their weather reports.

What do the tweeters do? (public information page)

What do tweeters do? or 3 rd Party App. Twitter Home page

What do tweeters do? If geotagging* is enabled: Insert the hashtag (keyword) #wxreport Enter your weather tweet It should look like: #wxreport golf ball size hail at my house. * Be sure geotagging is turn on for both your twitter account and on the 3 rd party app. If geotagging is NOT enabled: Insert the hashtag (keyword) #wxreport Insert WW WW Enter your weather tweet It should look like: #wxreport WW Fort Worth, TX WW golf ball size hail at my house.

The advantages of Twitter Large user database 100 million users around the world. 25+ million users in the U.S. Rich flexible Application Programming Interface (API) Easy to search tweets and get results

What the NWS does (for internal NWS use only)

What the NWS does Forecast offices then can access tweets via the webmap interface.

What the NWS does Forecast offices then can access tweets via the webmap interface.

What the NWS does Forecast offices then can access tweets via the webmap interface.

What the NWS does Tweets during the month of April

Good news Publicly accessible page

Good news

Advantages/Disadvantages Advantages: Potential to receive hundreds of weather tweets You can monitor the tweets yourself Real time feedback for ongoing weather Reports and pictures and videos, oh my! Disadvantages : Lots of junk and spam tweets and incorrect observations Some tweeters are not following the specific format

How to promote Web page headline Mention during weathercast Promote during weather intro or closing. Twitter account? Tweet about the program.

Twitter Hashtags for wx 1. #wxreport 2. #wxob 3. #STwx (where "ST" is your state two letter id) For the #wxreport, it would cover significant weather the tweeter actually saw and would include: tornado, hail, snow greater than an inch, dense fog and dust, floods, strong winds etc. For the #wxob, it would cover weather observed that was not significant and would include: standard weather obs, non-significant weather etc. For the #STwx, it would cover weather information that would be useful to the public and would include: reported storm tracks, reported storm damages, road closures, watch and warning information etc.

Tim Brice Tim Brice NWS – El Paso TX NWS – El Paso TX (575) (575) Public facing twitter information page: Internal weather forecast office twitter gathering page: 3 rd Party page showing the mapped tweets: Questions???