Tornados are top of mind in Ontario these days after one ripped through Goderich this week and the threat of severe storms earlier tonight. This fact was evident for a few hours on Twitter. #tornadowatch, Southern Ontario and Weather Network, where I work, all trended in the Canadian top nine.
Ontarians, including a couple talented people at The Weather Network, live tweeted about the storm so that I could virtually see it moving east across the south part of the province while also reading about conditions elsewhere in Ontario.
As I said in a note to the writer, “I think you set some kind of national or international weather live tweeting record.” And more importantly, people got the news they needed about the storm’s severity.
TV and web can’t match this pace. Sure their reach is far greater with millions more people tuning into our on-air broadcast and web site. But if you wanted to know what was happening every few seconds in different areas, these live streams provided nice little chunks of easy to digest news. Which greatly complimented information on our other platforms including Facebook. As evident by the tweets referring to our TV reports and web radar models.
It’s common for Canadians to need their weather news. Tonight’s weather reinforced this fact while also highlighting Twitter’s information sharing strength.
Not as strong as the thunder and lightning, high winds and violent rain just experienced, but impressive all the same.
Campbell Communications 