Chasing Hurricanes on Twitter

Social media has been used before to report and respond to disasters. Blogs and Wikipedia helped spread information about the 2004 tsunami and Ushahidi, an open-source project launched after a disputed election in Kenya, has been deployed in response to the Haitian earthquake and Japan’s series of disasters earlier this year.

Now the Weather Channel is getting in on the act. In addition to watching Hurricane Irene out your window or on television, you can read what everyone else is saying about the storm. The Weather Channel Social, which aggregates and filters tweets about the weather, launched two weeks ago, just in time for Irene. Plug in your own Zip Code and see what people around you are saying about the hurricane, or try the Zip of another city—say, Nags Head, North Carolina—and see what people who are beginning to experience the storm are tweeting...