Web logs offer hurricane coverage with the personal angle
By DAVE GUSSOW
Published September 4, 2004
Buzz Bruggeman typed away on his ThinkPad notebook computer as Hurricane Charley roared outside his Winter Park condo last month.
"I just sat here that night, with a glass of wine, looking out the window," said Bruggeman, a founder of the ActiveWords software company. "With the light from the keyboard on, I wrote and wrote and wrote."
The next morning, Bruggeman plopped his laptop on his car's hood, connected to the Internet wirelessly at Kinko's and shared his experience with the world on his Web log, or blog.
"I guess I realized about three years ago that blogs were going to be a very important and powerful idea," said Bruggeman, who uses his blog for personal observations as well as to get the word out about his business.
Everybody talks about the weather, but blogs are expanding the horizons of the conversations. People can give first-person accounts, post pictures, even get messages to check on someone's safety, as Bruggeman did after his Charley posting.
Traditional media outlets, including the St. Petersburg Times, have staffers post blogs when covering big events, including Hurricane Frances and the recent national political conventions.
But weather, particularly bad weather, seems to exert a particular fascination. WeatherBug, which offers free desktop software, started sending some of its meteorologists out to blog during Charley and now Frances.
"We want to use blogging to get to the personal stories," said Pete Celano, WeatherBug's vice president of marketing. "We're out to get that whole plethora of weather emotion, if there is such a thing."
Since it began the blogs, Celano says, WeatherBug has received about 1-million more monthly visits. "There's avid reading and not as much commenting to posts," Celano said. "We may inspire that as a second wave."
WeatherBug has six staffers, including four meteorologists, waiting for Frances. The team's assignment is to make observations, get pictures and find hotels with Internet access - and power.
WeatherMatrix, whose slogan is "8,000 Weather Enthusiasts Can't Be Wrong!" has more of a traditional bulletin board system for users to post comments. But founder Jesse Ferrell in State College, Pa., says Frances sparked a lot of interest, including from Florida.
"I saw quite a few applications (for membership) coming in from Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte" this week, said Ferrell, who started the site as a hobby in 1997 to seek out like-minded weather junkies.
Floridians already shaken by Charley wanted to know if they were going to be hit again. But other postings on the site buzzed with the possibility and history of two big storms hitting the same state within weeks of each other.
"I knew it was my destiny to go to school and become a meteorologist," said Ferrell, who has the degree but not the job.
Meanwhile, Bruggeman in Winter Park was supposed to be out of town for Frances, but his flight was canceled. And he was writing as the storm approached, including an entry called "the Smell of Fear."
