How’s The Weather?

Chris Pendleton reports that Weather Central has just launched a new beta community site called ReportStorms.com. The site utilizes Silverlight and you can report storms in your area, and/or look at what the weather is like (or was like) wherever in the world on a Microsoft Virtual Earth map.

ReportStormsCom

As you can see in the above screenshot, you can search for an address and filter the Storm Reports by date if you expand the Viewing Pane. You can also toggle type of reports on and off in the Legend, say you don’t want to see Flooding then you just click on it and it will disappear from the map.

To report an Event, right click the location on the map. After clicking Report you will be presented with the following balloon:

ReportStormsReport ReportStormsLegenda

I’ve left this one empty to show you how it looks when you start out (look how it noticed location, it says dinsdag..which is Dutch for Tuesday). After Type there’s a dropdown menu which gives you the same options as shown in the Legend, besides Cluster of Events, which it will create itself should there be more events for that location. Depending on which you choose from the dropdown you get another field with dropdown below in which you can give some more details (Type of Tornado, size of the hail, what damage does the storm do, how severe is the flooding etc.). Last but not least you can also attach an image or movie to your report, the top ones will be displayed and are accessible in the Viewing Pane under View Top Images and Videos.

To complete it all you can fill in your profile (complete with location and an avatar) and go on the forums to talk weather with others. Tip from Chris:

Here’s a great introduction to meet someone on this site, “So, how’s the weather?”

Well Chris, it’s quite stormy here but there’s nothing about it on that new site…guess they really really need new members.

Want to give it a go? Head over to ReportStorms.com. You don’t need to register (free) to view the storm reports, but you do if you wish to submit reports.

To all IE8 beta 2 users: click the compatibility button to view this site as it’s intended.