Ask HN: Tornado Touchdown Tracking

2 points by mikeknoop 15y ago ↗ HN

I live in central Missouri and know lots of people who have been affected the by recent severe storms and tornadoes in the surrounding area.

One observation I have made it that none of the major weather applications or services report locations of Tornado touchdowns. I feel like this is critically important to make important middle-term (not short, not long) safety decisions.

Is anyone aware of a service which tracks tornado signatures on radar or compiles real time updates regarding them (ie, twitter/facebook)?

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genericbrandx 15y ago ↗

Not aware of any existing services but during the recent tornadoes in AL, I was wondering why someone has built a google map/twitter mashup that would allow tweeting a sighting and either allow the person to specify the location or use the device's GPS readings. An account could be setup (@tornado_bot) and a service could pull the coordinates from its tweet-stream. If you follow it and are nearby, it could notify you of the danger(via direct message). Also, a way to specify possible direction and speed would be really beneficial.