Jared W. Smith

The latest foray into my meteorologically-themed social media exploration is the Charleston Weather FriendFeed group, designed with some automated aggregation of Charleston weather-related tweets in mind, but also designed as a point for folks to share their weather stories and reports. It seems like a strange, nearly too-narrowly focused topic for a FriendFeed group, but I see it as an important proof of concept stemming from some goals we set for Charleston news reporting in March.

You may remember the Charleston news hashtag summit-of-sorts. The meeting brought together media members, active Lowcountry bloggers, and concerned Twitter citizens. We hashed out a series of tags that would classify tweets accordingly. There are tags for news (#chsnews), breaking stories (#chsbrkg), and the like. The goal of using these — and really, any hashtag — is to bring related content together so people can filter their streams accordingly. These tags have met with moderate adoption; I’ve personally seen some tags more than others. One of them, #chswx, is one focus of my FriendFeed group. read more »

Severe weather season roars back to Charleston today. I’m in “hunker down” mode here, monitoring all sorts of varying weather information. Here’s how to keep up:

• On Twitter, I’ll live-tweet the storm event at @chswx. If you just want warnings and forecasts, I recommend @CharlestonWX. Also see @weatherwatches for advance notice of potential watches. Don’t forget local media, as well, including Rob Fowler, Josh Marthers, Joey Sovine, and the Live 5 Weather Team.
• I’m uploading radar images periodically to radar.charlestonwx.com. There’s an animation script which gives you 10 frames and many Level III products to play with.
• If time permits, I’ll do some writing with more detailed analysis at my new weather blog. Given the fast pace of these storms, blogging may be somewhat prohibitive. (It’s much easier to blog a hurricane than it is a springtime weather event.)

Despite all this technology we now have, your best defense is to have a NOAA Weather Radio and make sure to heed all warnings that come down from the National Weather Service or other emergency management officials. Remember, the Internet is a great tool, but is not intended for life-or-death decisions. Stay safe out there!

One of my focus areas in the early parts of this year has been to extract some of my side projects, such as Serious Business and Charleston Weather, out from under jaredwsmith.com so that I could give them some room to breathe and take on lives of their own. This process has largely been completed for Serious Business, as I was able to move it to a Tumblr site (which has worked well so far). Establishing Serious Business with its own branded site and Twitter account have been useful in forming a stable audience.

Now that Serious Business is done, it’s time to give my weather efforts the same treatment. The work on that started very, very early this morning, culminating in a somewhat buggy rough draft of the beginnings of a brand new Charleston Weather site at charlestonwx.com. read more »

Today was remarkable in Charleston for another reason than a historic day in America; depending on where you were, it snowed! It will continue to do so, too, throughout the evening and into tonight. Here’s a radar still from 6:00 PM, showing where snow has been reported (lots of places!)

NWS Charleston has noted accumulations of up to a quarter inch in Colleton County, with a trace of snow throughout the Charleston metro. I, personally, have seen a few flakes but nothing really out of the ordinary just yet. I’ll take video if/when I do. However, it seems as if the heaviest snow is remaining to the south and west; no telling if it will creep a bit more northeast. NWS keeps us in a 60% chance of snow and a Winter Weather Advisory until 11 PM, so it’s likely that we’ll see a bit more snow in the area before it’s over. Major accumulations aren’t expected; rather, the threat will be from puddles where it rained/sleeted earlier this morning refreezing overnight, as temperatures are expected to dip into the lower 20s inland (mid-20s near the coast). Wind chills will be somewhere in the low teens again. (It’s clear that Old Man Winter is reasserting himself after that absolutely balmy December.) Be very careful driving tomorrow morning in rush hour!

This morning I started the #omgsnow09 hashtag for Twitter users to make snow reports; there have been a lot of reports in North Charleston, and a couple in Summerville as well. Keep an eye on that one throughout the evening as more reports roll in. Also, watch @chswx on Twitter for updates as needed.

Charleston got an unusual wakeup call this morning: A 3.6 magnitude earthquake just a few miles from Goose Creek and Summerville. There is, indeed, a fault line in Summerville (making us California imports feel right at home), and it does occasionally perk up, but it’s rare when people actually feel it. So, understandably, there’s quite a buzz this morning.

I didn’t feel it in my apartment in West Ashley, but saw a message come across from the National Weather Service about a possible earthquake and put a message out on Twitter. I got a great response on FriendFeed, especially from Heidi, who was almost right over the epicenter. Reports are that it was felt as far as Johns Island, though.

Did you feel it? Feel free to leave your experience in comments.

Update: News2 reports that USGS has shifted the epicenter more towards Summerville. This jibes well with what Heidi was saying on FriendFeed, and explains some of the comments I’ve gotten from Goose Creek folks that didn’t feel it, either.

It’s definitely not going to feel very Decemberish this week, that’s for sure. Over the next couple days, we’ll be mired in occasional showers as a trough of low pressure is dropping in. This should clear out and bring us a very nice rest of the week.

It’s just not going to feel like December. NWS keeps us in the 70s for a majority of the week. Yes, 70s! It’ll be nice not to wake up and have to scrape my car, but still — the warmth will make it that much harder to get motivated to sit online and do Christmas shopping. The models seem to keep this warmth in play up through this weekend; temperatures seem to only begin to moderate closer to normal by the beginning of next week when another disturbance comes through. Don’t lose track of your sweaters, but keep the short sleeves handy through this week!

We in Charleston have reverted back to October, apparently. If you’ve stepped outside, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the return of warm, mid-70s temperatures, Charlestonian humidity and a familiar urge to dodge mosquitoes. Funk-nasty. This is happening thanks to a system pumping a very warm southerly flow into the area.

Well, this sort of thing doesn’t last too long in December, and typically, these temperature differences resolve themselves with force. A fairly potent storm system is sweeping through the middle of the country, causing plenty of problems with severe weather across Texas and into Mississippi and Alabama. So, as you might expect, we’ve got a slight risk of severe weather tomorrow, which primarily hinges on how much sunshine peeks through before the front arrives. In fact, the outer portions of the storm are showing up on radar.

So, keep an eye out during the day tomorrow — it could get a little rough at times. It’ll be through by Friday, and we’ll get back into upper 50s for highs (though the lows aren’t currently projected to be as low as they have been, which is good for my getting up on time). One thing is for certain, this late fall has been anything but normal; we just can’t seem to figure that out this time around.