Deneb Runs being boring is certainly a drawback, but these ideas all seem very useful.

Ideas so far

1. Add a lightning bolt to your NavMap upon entering a system or the actual storm.
2. Automatic time-stamped channel notice upon hitting a storm (system-wide or public).
3. Dock at a station to download weather reports for specific systems, via payed subscription or otherwise.
4. Create a newbie intro to ion storms.

Drawbacks

1. Deneb Run is boring.

Even better. see my storm_trak plugin.

Yep, I only really care about idea #1, on entering the storm. IMO the scope of the rest is a little unnecessary; I don't want to watch the weather channel in a game. I only think it would be natural to have a reminder of what storm you've stumbled across. I mean, you're going to remember anyways, but this just makes the game feel more intelligent, like it's actually trying to help you rather than be a dope about it.

If you want to advertise a plugin you should consider putting a link for the newbs.

I think everyone is missing an important and necessary point of ion storms...

they're random and dynamic. the minute we get weather reports is the instant these storms become deterministic.

there is so much potential for pirates as well as anyone other creative soul to use something with a built in storm radar to hunt within the storms unsuspecting traders get caught into over and over. it would pretty much render ion storms into real dead zones.

but I agree there is much potential in this idea.

I think a good compromise would be only receiving weather reports from either:

1) Your native race
2) POS Factions
3) only the sector you're currently in
4) only a limited number of sectors at a time
5) Never in grey, unless KOS by two or all three major nations, and POS with Corvus, or something along those lines