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AccuWeather

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AccuWeather
Company typePrivate
GenreWeather forecasting
FoundedNovember 15, 1962; 61 years ago (1962-11-15)
FounderJoel N. Myers
Headquarters
State College, Pennsylvania
,
U.S.
Servicessmartphone weather applications, online forecasts and videos
OwnerAccuWeather, Inc.
Number of employees
1324
WebsiteAccuWeather.com

AccuWeather is an American media company that provides commercial weather forecasting services worldwide.

AccuWeather was founded in 1962 by Joel N. Myers, then a Penn State graduate student working on a degree in meteorology. His first customer was a gas company in Pennsylvania. While running his company, Myers also became a member of Penn State's meteorology faculty. The company adopted the name "AccuWeather" in 1971.

AccuWeather is headquartered in State College, Pennsylvania, with sales offices in Rockefeller Center in New York City and Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. In 2006, AccuWeather acquired WeatherData, Inc. of Wichita, Kansas. As WeatherData Services, Inc., an AccuWeather company, the Wichita facility now houses AccuWeather’s specialized severe weather forecasters.[1]

Company profile

AccuWeather markets weather products and services, with 175,559 clients worldwide in media, business and government.[2] It also runs the free, advertising-supported website AccuWeather.com, an online weather provider. Third-party web analytics providers Alexa and SimilarWeb rated the site as the 129th most visited website in the United States, as of July 2015.[3]

AccuWeather's forecasts and services are based on weather information derived from numerous sources, including weather observations and data gathered by the National Weather Service and meteorological organizations outside the United States, and from information provided by non-meteorological organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the armed forces. AccuWeather employs 404 people, of whom 113 are meteorologists. AccuWeather operates a 24-hour commercially sponsored weather channel known as The Local AccuWeather Channel, which is similar to the now defunct NBC Weather Plus. The Local AccuWeather Channel launched in 2006 and is currently on the air in 56 markets including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Houston.[2]

The regular weather provider for Bloomberg Television and numerous local TV stations, AccuWeather also provides guest commentary on major TV networks. AccuWeather, through the United Stations Radio Networks (previously through Westwood One until 2009), also provides weather for numerous radio stations and newspapers, including WINS (AM) in New York City, KFWB (AM) in Los Angeles and WBZ (AM) in Boston. During severe-weather episodes, AccuWeather experts have been called upon by television journalists such as Larry King,[4] Geraldo Rivera,[5] and Greta van Susteren[6] for expert commentary. Many of its broadcast meteorologists, such as Elliot Abrams, are known nationally.

AccuWeather produces local weather videos each day for use on their own web site, on the Local AccuWeather Channel, on wired Internet and mobile application and web sites.[2] The company is also active in the areas of convergence[2] and digital signage.[7] They have added a user-contributed video section to their photo gallery.

National weather channel

In 2015, Verizon FiOS replaced The Weather Channel with a new 24/7 all-weather television network called "The AccuWeather Channel". This followed earlier negotiations among AccuWeather, The Weather Channel and DirecTV. The AccuWeather Channel is a separate operation from "The Local AccuWeather Channel", which continues to run in selected markets across the country. It became the third 24/7 weather network to launch on American Television, after The Weather Channel in 1982 and WeatherNation TV in 2011.[8]

AccuWeather in the profession of meteorology

AccuWeather created a unified and proprietary apparent temperature system known as "The AccuWeather Exclusive RealFeel Temperature" and has used the quantity in its forecasts and observations. The formula for calculating this value incorporates the effects of temperature, wind, humidity, sunshine intensity, cloudiness, precipitation, and elevation on the human body, similar to the rarely used (but public domain) Wet Bulb Globe Temperature. AccuWeather has been granted a United States patent on The RealFeel Temperature,[9] but the formula is a trade secret and has not been reviewed by other meteorological authorities. In response to AccuWeather's "RealFeel", The Weather Channel introduced their "FeelsLike" temperature reading.[10]

Criticisms

Long-term forecasting practices

In April 2012, AccuWeather drastically shortened the range of their publicly available historical data from 15 years to 1 year. They also began increasing the range of their forecast from 15 days, to 25 days, 45 days, and, by 2016, to 90 days. These hyper-extended forecasts have been compared to actual results several times and shown to be misleading, inaccurate and sometimes worse than simple predictions based on National Weather Service averages over a 30-year period.[11][12] It is generally accepted via chaos theory that reliable forecast is not possible beyond 7–10 days, or in rare cases up to two weeks.[11][13][14] An informal assessment conducted by Jason Samenow at The Washington Post asserted that AccuWeather's forecasts at the 25-day range were often wrong by as many as ten degrees, no better than random chance and that the forecasts missed half of the fourteen days of rain that had occurred during the month of the assessment.[15] AccuWeather responds that it does not claim absolute precision in such extremely long forecasts and advises users to only use the forecast to observe general trends in the forecast period,[16] but this contrasts with the way the forecasts are presented.[17] An assessment from the Post determined that the 45-day forecasts were not even able to predict trends accurately, and that, although the forecasts did not decrease in accuracy with time, the forecasts were so far off even in the short range to be useless.[17]

National Weather Service

The National Weather Service, which provides large amounts of the data that AccuWeather repackages and sells for profit, also provides that same information for free by placing it in the public domain.

On April 14, 2005, U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) introduced the "National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005" in the U.S. Senate. The legislation would have forbidden the National Weather Service from providing any such information directly to the public, and the legislation was generally interpreted as an attempt by AccuWeather to profit off of taxpayer-funded weather research by forcing its delivery through private channels.[18] The bill did not come up for a vote. Santorum received campaign contributions from AccuWeather's president, Joel Myers.[19]

See also

References

  1. ^ "ZoomInfo Cached Page". Cache.zoominfo.com. Retrieved 2011-11-20.
  2. ^ a b c d "Firm Expands Ways to Get Weather - Technology". redOrbit. 2006-12-03. Retrieved 2011-11-20.
  3. ^ "Accuweather.com Site Overview". Alexa. Retrieved 30 July 2015.
  4. ^ "CNN.com - Transcripts". CNN.
  5. ^ "Topics and Guests for September 24 & 25". Fox News. 2005-09-23.
  6. ^ "Covering Katrina". Fox News. 2005-08-29. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) [dead link]
  7. ^ "CORRECTION: Content From AccuWeather to Expand to Digital Signs - Business". redOrbit. 2006-08-11. Retrieved 2011-11-20.
  8. ^ "Verizon FiOS drops the Weather Channel". Los Angeles Times. 11 March 2015. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
  9. ^ "United States Patent: 7251579". Patft.uspto.gov. Retrieved 2011-11-20.
  10. ^ Carpenter, Mackenzie (January 25, 2014). "Have we become emotionally obsessed with the weather?". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  11. ^ a b Samenow, Jason (2016-04-11). "AccuWeather extends its controversial, 45-day weather forecasts to 90 days". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-04-14.
  12. ^ Nese, Jon (2013-12-26). "Students put AccuWeather long-range forecasts to the test". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-04-14.
  13. ^ Paul, Don (June 10, 2016). The Farmers' Almanac, long-range forecasts and other 'gibberish'. The Buffalo News. Retrieved June 12, 2016.
  14. ^ "Chaos in the Atmosphere". www.aip.org. Retrieved 2016-04-14.
  15. ^ Samenow, Jason (August 6, 2013). Accuweather: You cannot be serious. The Washington Post. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  16. ^ "AccuWeather unveils 45-day forecast - DC News FOX 5 DC WTTG". 2013-08-25. Archived from the original on August 25, 2013. Retrieved 2016-04-14. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  17. ^ a b Mesereau, Dennis (October 8, 2013). AccuWeather’s 45-day forecast fails to impress in multi-city test. The Washington Post. Retrieved October 11, 2013.
  18. ^ Weather info could go dark Archived 2007-05-17 at the Wayback Machine
  19. ^ "NEWSMEAT ▷ Joel Myers's Federal Campaign Contribution Report". Newsmeat.com. Retrieved 2011-11-20.

Reviews

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