The aftermath of last Friday night’s intense storm left residents of DC, Maryland and Virginia in a state of utter chaos this week. With more than 1,200,000 residents left without power, many A/C deprived locals turned to social media to voice their irritations.
Using social media monitoring tool Social Radar, we conducted a brief analysis of the social media talk this week regarding the devastating storm. We found that on average there were 38,695 posts per day regarding the storm, which was mentioned every 1.9 seconds. Most mentions, however, came from June 29, the night the unexpected storm hit.
A large percentage of users (46%) took to microblogs, such as Twitter, to converse about the horrific weather. The most popular hashtags used this week included #DC Storm, #No AC and #Pepco. An additional 43% of local residents used blogs. Users also chose to share information through forums and images as well. Many of the images shown via social media throughout the week showed damages caused by fallen trees on both cars and homes.
As shown in the word cloud above, the most popular terms used this week in regards to the weather included power, trees, down, reported, and service. Other commonly seen words included “outages,” “Pepco,” “heat,” and “restore.” We also found a closely related distribution between men and women, but women took the lead in weather talk with 51% and men following with 49%.
Although many customers have had their power restored, the 4th of July was still sweltering for those not as lucky. With all the commotion the last seven days have brought, I can’t help but ask: what’s in store for the next DC storm this summer?
