A “Thousand Points” of Citizen Weather Data
Today there is an exponential growth of global “social” weather communities.
When I first started storm intercepting 15 years ago, my connections where national. Now I might run into a few guys from Germany or from Europe on storm vacation tours (like last year). I periodically communicate with a meteorologist in India who has done work on early typhoon warning systems. I might chat with a chaser in Australia and ” shoot the breeze” on a social weather forum.
There is also a proliferation in our digital age of local home weather station reporting, 24/7 weather cams, like the “Backyard” Citizen Weather reporting on the WeatherBug Network.
There’s a growth of citizen watch NWS Storm Spotter program (often the “eyes and ears ” in helping forecasters and emergency management officials) and the immediacy in the Internet “I-reports” on large disasters. A generation ago, a major weather event might have been chronicled /videotaped by a handful of people. Now, it’s chronicled by a thousand points of citizen data. This happens via blogs, weather forums, twitter storm reports, smartphone video, etc., and its references to humanity. This also adds to our overall understanding of severe weather events. There are even smart phone weather and storm chasing apps–this is not your grandmas storm chasing!
There is also the ever expanding and CWOP observer programs in which citizen-based real-time weather is added to NOAA Mesonet , NWS and others.
Hopefully this will all add up to a greater awareness and preparedness as people look to see whats on the horizon.
Article by Tom Windsor
(also posted on Stormtrack website)
