As a complementary service to its iPhone app (link above), Oz Weather is now providing weather forecasts and observations via twitter, with official data sourced from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
As a twitter user, all you need to do is to follow the twitter stream for the city (or cities) of your choice.
- Adelaide @weather_adel
- Brisbane @weather_bris
- Canberra @weather_canb
- Darwin @weather_darwin
- Hobart @weather_hobart
- Melbourne @weather_melb
- Perth @weather_perth
- Sydney @weather_sydney
- Gold Coast @weather_goldco
The latest forecast along with any current weather warnings is tweeted four times a day – morning, noon, late afternoon and late evening.
Additionally, it is possible to view the latest hourly weather observations by clicking on the twitter link at the end of each forecast (@obs_melb for Melbourne, for example). Or if you are a keen weather follower, you can also choose to follow this stream and automatically get the updates every hour as part of your own twitter stream.
Due to the nature of twitter, traditional methods of delivering weather forecasts don’t necessarily work well on it, but dedicated streams on a per-city basis is one approach that does seem to have some promise. Twitter weather is a fairly new phenomenon, but a number of players are already experimenting with it. No doubt we will see some interesting and useful developments emerging as a result.