One of the most important products at The Weather Channel is its severe weather coverage, therefore it’s crucial that we employ the most effective means to convey information to our audiences across all screens – TV, online at weather.com and wunderground.com, mobile and tablet. In October 2012, The Weather Channel announced that it would enhance that product with a new naming system for winter storms, making it the first national organization in North America to proactively name winter storms. Announced in time for the start of the 2012-2013 winter season, naming storms improves severe-weather coverage by making communications and information sharing easier, enabling consumers to better understand forecasts that could significantly affect their lives. It also reinforces Weather’s position as a forward-thinking leader in the weather industry. We wanted to use our meteorological ability, support and technology to bring a more systematic approach to naming winter storms - similar to the way tropical storms have been named for years – to raise awareness and reduce the risks, danger and confusion for consumers in the storms’ paths. This was particularly important as social media has grown in popularity. Naming storms helps curate tweets around a specific winter storm event so we, and those impacted, can share information in the most effective way. As a result, we saw a spike on Twitter during Winter Storm Nemo with 1 million impressions from February 6 – February 11. The Hashtag ‘#Nemo’ appeared 3.1 billion times within a Twitter user’s timeline and celebrities even joined in, including Ellen DeGeneres, Jimmy Fallon, Katie Couric and more. Hashtags are an intrinsic part of social media, and a storm name proved to be the best way to efficiently and systematically convey storm information. Storm-name hashtags have been used with tropical storms and hurricanes for years, and Winter Storm Nemo’s billion-plus impressions on Twitter last winter demonstrated that the same system is ideal for winter storms as well.
