Reportstorms.com

[andywxman]

Hi Everyone,

I work for a company called Weather Central. We are the largest weather software and data company that creates the on air weather graphic systems that you see behind the Meteorologists on TV stations worldwide.

Over the last few months we have been working on a very cool project that I think will be of interest to the Storm2k community. We have developed and beta launched a website called Reportstorms.com. The basic premise is that when you observe weather occurring in your neighborhood, you could go to reportstorms.com and issue a Local Storm Report for your location. This could be a wind damage, flooding hail, tornados... you name it. Reportstorms.com works on an interactive Microsoft virtual earth map, so you just type in your address, right click on the map and report your storm. You also have the ability to write a brief text summary of what happened and even attach a movie or picture that you took if you want to share it with the station.

Within seconds we make these reports available to our television customers. Right now I know that a number of you already report severe weather events to the local television stations via email. Reportstorms.com will expedite that process. Your reports will pop up on a list in their actual on air weather graphic system. If the television station meteorologist wants to use them, they simple click and add your event to their show.

Additionally we have partnered with Spotternetwork.org ( http://spotternetwork.org ) so that the reports issued by people in spotternetwork will be available to our television clients as well. For those of you unfamiliar with Spotternetwork I encourage you to check them out as well. They work with many of the emergency management and storm spotting communities to relay critical weather information to the severe weather community.

We have television clients in most of the hurricane affected areas including

Norfolk
Wilmington, NC
New Bern, NC
Raliegh
Charlotte
Myrtle Beach
Columbia, SC
Miami
Tampa
Orlando
West Palm Beach
Ft. Myers
Tallahassee
Jacksonville
Mobile
Montogomery
Biloxi
New Orleans
Baton Rouge
Lake Charles
Beaumont
Houston
Corpus Christi
Victoria, TX



We are ready to start beta testing this functionality and I thought it would be fun to involve this community! Please come by and check us out.

To get started

1. Go to http://www.reportstorms.com

2. You will need to install Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 (This is kind of like Flash). The site should prompt you to do this. If it does not go to http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/re ... stall.aspx

and then restart your browser.

3. Register to be a storm reporter in the top right hand corner of the site.

I think this will be an exciting way for the general public to relay critical real time weather information to the television station meteorologist to help them cover storms, and save lives.

Thanks for checking us out!

Andy Rice
Senior Product Manager
Weather Central Inc
arice@wxc.com

[gatorcane]

is it non-for-profit (i.e free to use the product for a reporter who registers?)

[andywxman]

We are not charging our TV station clients for the data generated by the site and anyone can view the storm reports that the public reports on reportstorms.com

[AJC3]

Is the NWS involved in this at all?

Do the reports get relayed (directly or indirectly) to the NWS?

Do the reports get relayed to local media outlets first?

[andywxman]

I have had a number of conversations with the NWS and some local WFO's about this. Anyone can view events on the site, and I know some local WFO's and maybe the SPC is looking to do this based on my conversations.

The reports will go to the TV stations and the website at the same time.

Andy