Twitter has limitations as a means for notifying the public about imminent tornado danger, says a blog post from Crisis Commons, an organization dedicated to developing innovations in crisis management through open data and volunteer technology communities.

Recent tornadoes in the United States have been accompanied by Twitter messages such as "take shelter now" originating from relief organizations, news media and often re-Tweeted by individuals. Such Tweets have been a growing fact of life with all types of disasters. But in contrast to other natural disasters, the path of a tornado may be discernible only minutes ahead of its arrival.

While Tweets may reach an audience that otherwise is isolated for lack of electricity--but still in possession of a charged smart phone--Tweets that lack specificity run the danger of reaching people in fact not affected by tornado danger, and so run the risk of desensitizing them to warnings.

Also, "it can be very hard to determine if the [Tweeted] information is new, or in fact, in the case of multiple tornadoes (which we've seen) which tornado people are talking about," the blog post notes.

For more:
- read the Crisis Commons blog post

Related Articles:
Spotlight: FEMA 'experimenting' with social media 
FEMA loses lessons learned database