Like other public agencies, the National Weather Service is trying to take advantage of social media to reach more people in times of severe weather or other natural disasters. Chance Hayes is the Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Wichita. He says he has really seen where social media can be helpful with winter storms and flooding.

Chance Hayes Audio

But with the pros come the cons. Hayes says people who take to Facebook and Twitter to offer up their own predictions sometimes start a wave of misinformation that makes it hard for the Weather Service to contradict.

Chance Hayes Audio

Hayes says the weather service needs to be careful when forecasting high impact weather events online to make sure that they are not confusing the public. He says the goal should be to communicate the best forecast, along with an understanding of the uncertainty in that forecast, and both should be easy to interpret.