Unless you have been hidden under a rock recently (or an avalanche) you can’t have failed to have heard that the UK has ground to a practical standstill following an attack of bad weather.
I live in Harrogate in the north of England and work in Leeds regularly and we have had the worst snow in 30 years. I was particularly proud to see our home town as the focus of the national news as the chaos continued last night. Yesterday, we were one of the places worst hit. I have included a couple of images to show you just how bad it is in my area. I have decided to work from home again today as my car is even more covered today despite me trying to dig it out yesterday.
Anyway, where there is a problem, there is a clever Twitter app. So here is a Twitter mashup by Ben Marsh which shows you where people are tweeting about UK snow and how bad it is coming down. Due to the fact that the snow is going to be around for some days yet – I thought it was worth posting about to stay abreast of things that are going on. It’s actually quite fun too to follow what is happening and where. The media in the UK has covered the snow well and kept us informed but i have been particularly interested in reading my Twitter friends tweets from around the country.
All you do to use the Twitter app is tweet the hashtag #uksnow and the first half of your postcode, and rate the snow that is falling out of ten and your tweet arrives on the map. Even better this is also available on the iPhone. This is a very useful app especially at this time of year but I doubt people will be using it in July – maybe we will have UK/US sun.
Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.
