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Weather Underground (weather service)

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The Weather Underground, Inc.
Company typeSubsidiary
Founded1995; 29 years ago (1995)
FounderJeff Masters
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
,
United States
ParentThe Weather Company[1]
Websitewww.wunderground.com

Weather Underground is a commercial weather service providing real-time weather information via the Internet. Weather Underground provides weather reports for most major cities across the world on its website, as well as local weather reports for newspapers and websites. Most of its United States information comes from the National Weather Service (NWS), as federal law specifies that information from that agency falls within the public domain. The website is available in many languages, and customers can access an ad-free version of the site with additional features for an annual fee. Weather Underground is owned by The Weather Company, a subsidiary of IBM.[2] It airs from 6-8pm ET on TWC, and very rarely it would gain two extra hours (ending at 10pm ET) during storm coverage (like it did with Hurricane Earl).

History

Weather Underground (WU) is based in San Francisco, California and was founded in 1995 as an offshoot of the University of Michigan's Internet weather database. The name is a reference to the 1960s militant radical student group the Weather Underground, which also originated at the University of Michigan.[3]

Jeff Masters, a doctoral candidate in meteorology at the University of Michigan working under the direction of Professor Perry Samson, wrote a menu-based Telnet interface in 1991 that displayed real-time weather information around the world. In 1993, they recruited Alan Steremberg and initiated a project to bring Internet weather into K-12 classrooms. WU's president Alan Steremberg wrote "Blue Skies" for the project, a graphical Mac gopher client, which won several awards. When the Mosaic Web browser appeared, this provided a natural transition from "Blue Skies" to the Web.

The original logo, used from 1997 through 2014

In 1995 Weather Underground, Inc. became a commercial entity separate from the university.[4] It has grown to provide weather for print sources, in addition to its online presence. In 2005, Weather Underground became the weather provider for the Associated Press; WU also provides weather reports for some newspapers (including the San Francisco Chronicle) and the Google search engine. Alan Steremberg, Weather Underground's president, also worked on the early development of Google's search engine with Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

In October 2008, Jeff Masters reported that the site was #2 in Internet Weather for 2008.[5]

In February 2010, Weather Underground launched FullScreenWeather.com, a full screen weather Web tool with integrated mapping and mobile device use in mind.

On July 2, 2012, The Weather Channel announced that it would acquire Weather Underground, which would become operated as part of The Weather Channel Companies, LLC, which was later renamed "The Weather Company". The Weather Underground website continues to operate as a separate entity from The Weather Channel's primary site, weather.com, with its existing staff retained. Third-party web analytics providers Alexa and SimilarWeb rate the site as the 117th and 98th most visited website in the United States respectively, as of July 2015.[6][7] SimilarWeb rates the site as the second most visited weather website globally, attracting more than 47 million visitors per month.[7][8] The Weather Company also uses the site's San Francisco headquarters as a regional office.[9][10]

On October 28, 2015, Jeff Masters noted that IBM had officially announced an agreement to acquire The Weather Company’s business-to-business, mobile and cloud-based web properties, including Weather Underground, WSI, weather.com, and also the Weather Company brand. Meanwhile, the television service (The Weather Channel) remains a separate entity.[11] The deal was finalized on January 29, 2016.[1]

Blogs

Web logs (blogs) are one of the main features in Weather Underground, allowing users of the site to create blogs about weather, everyday life and anything else. Jeff Masters started the first blog on April 14, 2005,[12] and he now posts blog entries nearly every day. Richard B. Rood has been writing blogs on climate change and societal response since 2007, with new entries on a weekly basis.

On October 14, 2016, the Wunderblog announced that it would be changing their name to Category 6, a name which was suggested by Jeff Masters. They decided on the name because it "alludes to our deep fascination with all types of weather and climate extremes, including the many important facets of our changing climate", and "will provide all the insight and expert analysis needed to put the extreme events of our evolving 21st-century climate into context."[13]

Products

Weather Underground also uses observations from members with automated personal weather stations (PWS).[14] Weather Underground currently uses observations from over 100,000 personal weather stations.[15]

The Weather Underground's WunderMap overlays weather data from personal weather stations and official NWS stations on a Google Map base and provides many interactive and dynamically updated weather and environmental layers.[16]

The service distributes Internet radio feeds of NOAA Weather Radio stations from across the country, as provided by users. The Associated Press uses Weather Underground to provide national weather summaries.[17]

Weather Underground has several Google Chrome extensions[18] and applications for iPhone, iPad and Android[19] including FullScreenWeather.com, a redirect to a full screen weather viewer tied into Google maps. There is also an app developed for Roku devices.[20]

In February 2015, Weather Underground released an iOS app called Storm.[21] This app is universal, and can be used on both iPhone and iPad. Other apps by Weather Underground include WunderStation[22] for iPad and WunderMap[23] for iOS and Android.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "IBM Finalizes Deal for Weather Channel Product and Tech Business". The Wrap. January 29, 2016.
  2. ^ Masters, Jeff (28 October 2015). "Weather Underground Bought by IBM". Weather Underground. SBM. Retrieved 2 November 2015.
  3. ^ Schwartz, John; Stelter, Brian (July 3, 2012). "Fans Howl After Weather Site Buys Out Rival". The New York Times.
  4. ^ Weather Underground, Inc. The First Internet Weather Service. Retrieved on 2008-04-05.
  5. ^ Jeff Master's WunderBlog, 10-27-2008 Heavy Internet Weather Retrieved on 2008-10-27.
  6. ^ "wunderground.com Site Overview". Alexa. Retrieved 30 July 2015.
  7. ^ a b "Wunderground.com Analytics". SimilarWeb. Retrieved 30 July 2015.
  8. ^ "Top 50 sites in the world for News And Media > Weather". SimilarWeb. Retrieved 30 July 2015.
  9. ^ Weather Channel buys Weather Underground, brand stays. PaidContent.org. Retrieved July 4, 2012.
  10. ^ Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog: Wunderground.com sold to The Weather Channel Companies, Weather Underground, July 2, 2012.
  11. ^ "Weather Underground Bought by IBM, by Dr. Jeff Masters, October 28, 2015".
  12. ^ Weather Underground, Inc. Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog. Retrieved on 2008-04-05.
  13. ^ "Our New Name: Category 6™". Weather Underground. October 14, 2016. Retrieved October 15, 2016.
  14. ^ Weather Underground, Inc. Personal Weather Station. Retrieved on 2008-04-05.
  15. ^ Weather Underground, Inc. Personal Weather Station Network. Retrieved on 2015-02-16
  16. ^ Weather Underground, Inc. WunderMap Retrieved on 2015-02-01.
  17. ^ WEATHER UNDERGROUND For The Associated Press. Weather Search Retrieved on 2009-10-28.
  18. ^ "Weather Underground - Chrome Web Store". Chrome.google.com. Retrieved 2015-05-14.
  19. ^ "Weather Underground - Android Apps on Google Play". Play.google.com. Retrieved 2015-05-14.
  20. ^ "Weather Underground for Roku". Wunderground.com. Retrieved 2015-05-14.
  21. ^ "Storm by Weather Underground | Weather Underground". Wunderground.com. Retrieved 2015-05-14.
  22. ^ "WunderStation by Weather Underground | Weather Underground". Wunderground.com. Retrieved 2015-05-14.
  23. ^ "WunderMap® by Weather Underground". Wunderground.com. Retrieved 2015-05-14.
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