Web logs offer hurricane coverage with the personal angle
By
DAVE GUSSOW, Times Staff Writer
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."
ON THE
WEB:
Buzz Bruggeman: buzzmodo.typepad.com/buzzmodo/
St. Petersburg Times Frances blog: http://www.sptimes.com/
Weatherbug blog: weatherbug.blogs.com/
WeatherMatrix: www.weathermatrix.net/
[Last modified September 4, 2004,
00:36:20]
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