Video Nowcasts - Using Google Plus Hangouts to Disseminate Weather Information

Google Plus (also, Google+) is a social network that is a little more than one year old, with a rapidly growing number of users. Google Plus has several unique characteristics that lend it to being a very useful platform for disseminating weather information to National Weather Service partners and users. Recent enhancements to its video chat platform (known as Hangouts) allows users to give detailed weather briefings that include desktop sharing, online collaboration and video archiving on YouTube.

One problem that NWS forecast offices have experienced in their video briefing experiments is the difficulty of knowing which video format covers the most users. Offices have had to produce their video briefings in multiple formats to accommodate the greatest number of users. Since almost all mobile platforms and modern Web browsers can play YouTube videos, storing video nowcasts in that format allows the presentation to be seen by the greatest number of users. Also, forecast offices have the ability to broadcast live on YouTube through the Hangouts environment during rapidly developing weather events.

This presentation will cover some of the video requirements of a local NWS Weather Forecast office, the advantages and disadvantages of using Google Plus Hangouts and some of the possible applications of this video presentation platform.

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