It’s mid-May, and we are suddenly in he severe weather doldrums, as there are a few spots of slight risk moving from the Rockies into the Lower Mississippi Valley over the next couple of days. It seems like the jump from winter weather to rote showers and thunderstorms was pretty abrupt. In fact, the story of last week was snow in Colorado and Wyoming.
This slower pattern has likely kept traffic down on our favorite weather websites, but if you were there, surely you learned quite a bit about El Nino and pollen. If you haven’t been to visit our friends, you may not have noted the refreshed look of Weatherbug
The new look is definitely informed by their background as a popular app, both on mobile, and as software starting 20 years ago. It’s clean, compartmentalized and easy to distinguish from one piece of information to another. It doesn’t feel as though an app developer tried to build a website, however, which is a very good bit of news. The bug crawling around is fun.
I know we’ve had a couple of font or layout based posts lately, but this is for two reasons. One, it’s quiet out there, but two, the importance of good communication in meteorology can’t be understated. Bad weather often needs immediate action, and that needs to be transmitted clearly. Even if not immediate, threats also need to be clearly addressed, in a manner that is obtainable by people that aren’t necessarily versed in atmospheric science.
Building trust through understanding, legibility and accuracy is important in the quiet times, as well. If we have learned anything in the last several years, it is that science is useless if it can’t be communicated.