Crowdsourcing Irene

New York City’s Severe Weather site allows victims or observers to document their damage through a reporting feature. This comes with the caveat “Insofar as any posts made concern weather conditions and weather-related service disruptions, the City will not take action.” I’m not sure why people would use this tool, but perhaps in the future it will be a real communications tool. The same site was used for reporting neighborhood situations during the big blizzard last year, according to Mashable.