A new Twitter storm reporting program now uses Geotagging to allow the National Weather Service (NWS) to monitor the weather through your tweets.

Geotagging allows users who opt-in to Geotag their tweets with their exact location. To enable Geotagging, users must click the “enable geolocation” option, found in the Account tab of the Settings option in their Twitter account.

Geotagging does not change the appearance of tweets on Twitter.com, but third party API developers can take advantage of the information to create APIs such as the one described in this post.

Twitter users must include the hashtag #wxreport on their tweet about the weather. The tweets geolocation information allows it to be plotted on a Google map. The report is then relayed to the appropriate NWS field office and can be used by meteorologists in a variety of ways, including in an official storm report.

NWS expects this program to increase the timeliness and accuracy of online weather reporting and communication between the public and local weather forecasters.

The public can stay informed by watching the #wxreport hashtag. Media outlets can also watch the user-generated weather reports to monitor the weather.

Where Geotag data is not available, users can state their location within the tweet using the format WW [location] WW.