Turning to the Web to Prepare for Hurricane Irene

With much of the east coast bracing for the largest storm of our lifetimes it is worth asking how millions of people – many of whom haven’t had to deal with a serious hurricane before are becoming informed of the trajectory of Hurricane Irene. After all, we’ve been told by the media that the path of this weather event is fluid and one person interviewed on one of the cable shows even compared the hurricane’s path to that of a walking drunk.

To learn more I reached out to Jazmine Maddox from weather.com to learn how the company’s traffic has increased. In a word, the increase in traffic is breathtaking. According to Omniture there was a full 193 percent increase in page views from August 24-25 and this is on top of daily increases of 67% and 94%.

weather.com

23-Aug

24-Aug

25-Aug

Page views

Daily PVs

53,424,220

63,048,613

98,929,975

% Diff

67%

94%

193%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mobile Web

23-Aug

24-Aug

25-Aug

 

Page views

 

Daily PVs

7,878,069

9,796,804

11,991,844

 

% Diff

2%

27%

53%

 

Many news shows have added a small window tracking the hurricane reminding viewers to be vigilant. I credit these constant reminders as well as the amazing mass transit shutdowns for alerting the public that this storm may be one for the history books.

Let’s just hope this storm heads out to the ocean and spares us – but either way, it is good to see record numbers of people tracking the storm in an effort to be as ready as possible if they are in the hurricane’s path.

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