That Atlantic ocean side of the United States is in the middle of its hurricane season–June 1st through November 30th–and there’s a storm of interest heading towards the Floridan coast called Hurricane Irene. While she hasn’t hit landfall in the United States, Irene has been picking up strength, and has, in fact, already struck Puerto Rico as she heads towards the eastern seaboard.

While there are an awful lot of ways to follow the progress of Hurricane Irene–the National Hurricane Center, NASA–Twitter has proven to be quite reliable when it comes to potentially disastrous natural phenomenon, and with Hurricane Irene, it’s no different. Currently, the king tweet of the Irene trend–at least in regards to being the top promoted tweet–belongs to the MyWeather.com feed, with the following:

And thus, we see the effectiveness of the promoted tweets advertising campaign. It’s great for getting you to the top of various trends lists, and in this particular case, the information is indeed pertinent, if not self-serving. MyWeather REALLY wants us to see their Bing-powered hurricane tracker.

Granted, that tweet got much more reception than the first one that was embedded. Meanwhile, the latest promoted tweet has only one retweet, even thought it has more relevant information than the “check out our map” tweet, but digression is the best policy here.

As for Puerto Rico, the damage was done:

But things seems to be getting back to some level of normalcy now that Irene has moved on:

While Florida is a primary concern of many on Twitter:

Perhaps the Bahamas and Cuba should be included as well, especially when you consider Irene’s path:

While there may be a certain level of “only if it’s happening to me is it important” that goes on at Twitter, once you can separate the wheat from the chaff, Twitter once again proves its value. It will also do a good job–provided people are paying attention to the trends–of serving as an early warning system for those who may otherwise be unaware.