We are a ridiculously goofy married couple of self-confessed weather geeks from tornado alley, both of whom were always the type more likely to be found standing outside watching a crazy thunderstorm with huge grins on our faces as opposed to taking shelter like normal people are taught to do under such circumstances. Neither of us has professional training or formal education in meteorology, but we have studied the subject extensively, and we’re very careful to rely on data, forecasts, and opinions from trained weather experts and reliable information sources. OTPI doesn’t forecast the weather so much as simply report what the experts are saying, but we do it with heaping doses of humor, sarcasm, and silliness. All the while, we’re both still wearing those same huge grins.
So, how did OTPI get started? We’re glad you asked. There we were, July of 2014, and Typhoon Neoguri was heading for Okinawa. Everyone on Okinawa was getting ready to go into TCCOR-1E and wondering how to pass the time while in lockdown. That was when these two intrepid weather geeks had the bright idea to create a Facebook group called “Typhoon Neoguri Pics & Info”. We invited about 20 of our friends so that everyone could share photos, videos, and mutual complaints while riding out the storm. We left the group open so that anyone who wanted to add someone else could do so, and boy… did they ever. As Typhoon Neoguri took its sweet time passing over Okinawa, everyone in the group added some friends, and then the new people all added their friends, and so on, and so on, until the group exploded to over 5,000 members. And with everyone’s help, it became a great source of information. People used it to share information on which flooded roads to avoid, which stores were open, how to get help with emergency situations, and much much more. Afterwards, everyone was of the unanimous opinion that it would be a really good idea to keep the group around for when the next typhoon came along. Unfortunately, big Facebook groups can’t change their names, so that original group was stuck being named after Typhoon Neoguri forever. It was also becoming difficult to weed out the ads for diet pills and other nonsense that people kept trying to post. We put our heads together <klunk!> and combined the powers of one journalism degree, one broadcasting degree, and some experience in professional social media management. And, voilà… Okinawa Typhoon Pics & Info was born.
Initially we took a more serious tone when reporting weather information, but sometimes we couldn’t resist having a little fun. Whenever we joked around, we noticed that in the comments we were getting a lot of favorable comparisons to someone called “Stormy”. After some research, we discovered that Stormy was the nickname of a much beloved meteorologist who issued the official weather warnings for Fleet Activities Okinawa up until about 2012. Reading through some of his old posts, we also discovered that the guy was hilarious. So, what the heck? If Stormy could do it, why couldn’t we? At that point, we made a choice to just have fun with OTPI, let our twisted senses of humor run wild, and see how it would go. After all, it was just a Facebook page with a few thousand followers, and we were only running it as a hobby. Well, the rest is history, at this point. People really liked the new, funnier OTPI, and within a couple of years time the page’s following swelled to over 27,000.
Truth be told though, everything you've just read is a total lie. It's actually been Sparky The Weather Dog all along.
