Snow Joke: Twitter and Trendsmap predict weather forecast

Twitter and global trending topics map Trendsmap are prediciting the snowy weather forecast across Britain, through recording hash tags such as #uksnow and #snow, as well as keywords in user’s tweets.

As the screenshots below show, Trendsmap appears to note the worst conditions in the South of England. True to form, the map reflects the reality of the snow in areas such as London and Cornwall, where travel has come to a halt, more than 400 schools have closed and a further 6 inches of snow to fall (on top of up to 10 inches already settled there) today.

Those in Ireland are similarly suffering, tweeting about lightning as well as heavy snowfall. Though the most popular keywords used were ‘inches’, ‘cancelled’ and the ‘snowman’, which suggests despite cancellations (work, school or travel related) people are making the most of the snow.

Even #uksnow – a now global hash tag- received its greatest hits in the UK, with many giving their snow coverage marks out of ten (2/10 is a few flakes, while anything over 7/10 is a blizzard, according to the creator of the UK Snow map, Ben Marsh).

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Social media expert and writer Chris Brogan also blogged today about how useful geopocketing could be. Geopocketing would be a system in which people could restrict tweets to people in just their area, if irrelevant to all followers, in some situations. In his case, it would be useful for CES coverage. The technology would be a great idea in this situation too- how useful would it be if you wanted to know the conditions of your destination before you began travelling there?

So before you plan a journey out in the current climate, don’t just check the weather forecast on your TV, check out what other people are saying via Twitter and Trendsmap – it is updated by the second, after all!