If you scrolled through Facebook or Twitter this weekend, odds are you saw at least a dozen different pictures of Hurricane Patricia. There’s a pretty good chance at least half of them were fake or misrepresented. If you have an internet browser, you have access to a quick and easy viral image debunker. The internet will be a better place if we all start using it.

Have you seen maps floating around social media that promise record-breaking snowfall this winter? They’re all fake, so stop sharing them. These ridiculous hoaxes have tricked millions of people into believing fake forecasts as fact, and it harms trust in actual science every time a new hoax goes around.

Social media is flooded with fake and misleading weather forecasts created by untrained, uninformed, and often underage individuals we like to call “weather weenies.” We try like hell to curtail their damaging hoaxes, but one country went a step further: beginning on Friday, weather weenies are outlaws in China.

People will go to any length for a little bit of internet fame, like setting your crotch on fire, jumping off a building, or planking on train tracks. Thankfully, there are less painful ways to achieve notoriety: lie through your teeth! Some sorry individual froze a water balloon yesterday and tried to pass it off as hail.

The wealth of information available online puts the world at our fingertips—literally! You can click a link and look at a picture taken from space just a few minutes ago. This treasure trove of data is great, but it takes smart consumption to grow smarter about the world around us. Not all sources of weather information are equal, and we need to learn what sources are worth listening to, and which ones are peddling a load of sleet.

How do you know when to trust someone when they say "a hurricane is coming?" Should you only trust the NWS? Television weatherpeople? Your favorite Gawker weather blogger? All too often, people don't care where they get their weather information, and that's a huge problem.