Tweather - an idea

I mentioned in my previous entry an idea for how standard data could be published via twitter enabling tweets on a common theme to be combined from multiple sources, databased and republished.

Maybe the best potential use for this idea is to produce a live or near-live weather site based on people's tweets from all over the UK about what the weather is doing NOW.

Using a standard set of data in a specific order, people could publish what the weather is like where they are.  If all the data is gathered and brought together using a mapping service, a weather map could be produced that changes dynamically with the tweets.  Not so much a 'weather forecast' but a 'Tweather forecast'.

This has the potential to give accurate, minute-by-minute data on moving weather fronts and could be a useful source of information.  A belt of rain moving across an area would be tracked and mapped and it may even be possible to predict where that rain will fall next - a true tweather forecast!

Tweets could be vastly simplified using applications that simply require the user to tap a weather icon on their screen - the time, date and location would be automatically added.

~23:58 ~05/11/10 ~Essex ~Chelmsford ~Light Rain