Want to be part of a government experiment?

I can guarantee that this one is completely painless with no hair loss, blurred vision or dry mouth side effects. The National Weather Service has launched an experimental program that will be using Twitter "tweets" to help monitor "significant weather information." The National Weather Service website explains:

Everyone talks about the weather. Now's your chance to "tweet" it and be heard. Through an experimental program, the National Weather Service will be searching for tweets that contain significant weather information.

Why Twitter?

An advantage of searching Twitter for weather reports is the capability to utilize recently added "geotagging" -- geographical information that is associated with something, in this case individual Tweets. This allows the NWS to correlate each Tweet to its location when it was sent. This capability will help to enhance and increase timely and accurate online weather reporting and communication between the public and their local weather forecast offices. The reports will be carefully evaluated during the experiment to ensure quality and timeliness.

Who Can Participate?

Anyone with a Twitter account can participate. Note: Trained storm spotters should use pre-established communication methods (toll-free line, eSpotter, etc.), when possible, to send severe weather reports to the NWS.

For all the information on what to do, click here and read the entire page.

Now you can use that Twitter power for good instead of for mind-numbing factoids like what you ate for breakfast and your opinion on American Idol. Yay!