Since we've had all this winter weather recently, I've been struck how official weather channels such as the Met Office, the BBC, and DoT websites such as Travel Scotland are good at the "macro" level but fail when it comes to the local level: are the roads to work going to be icy or not? Are there fallen trees likely to impede my progress? What are the conditions like in the next town?
Local radio round here does give a fairly good indication of what's going on, but I hate having to listen to piped music and inane banter to get the information that I want.
Hence my idea for Weather 2.0: interactive weather reports for your area. The idea is that when a contributor is out walking the dog, putting in a few miles before work, or have got to work, they post a brief report as to what conditions are actually like. For example, on my journey home tonight I could have posted about the packed ice on the roads with snow on top leading to lots of cars getting stick on even minor inclines. (All that Traffic Scotland warned of were icy roads).
Does anything like this actually exist, or could I be the next Sergy Brin? Mrs M suggested it was the sort of thing that might work on Twitter - having no experience of the service and no particular desire to at present I have no idea myself.
