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Wunderground.com sold to The Weather Channel Companies
- wensing 14y agoThis is interesting. I think it's a good fit from a business model perspective (both are ad-driven, albeit TWC more so), but the fan bases are very different. The geeks at Wunderground are already crying foul ("YOU ARE GOING TO DESTROY WXUG!") and the typical fan of The Weather Channel is probably wondering why everyone is talking about weather happening underground all of a sudden. Also, Wundergrounders trust the lack of hype/sensationalism from Wunderground, but the same is never said about TWC. Does anyone want to venture a guess as to why TWC would bother to acquire Wunderground?
- emeraldd 14y agoYou're echoing my thoughts exactly. The first thing that came to mind with this headline was 'Well, about the only weather site I care about.'
- ben1040 14y ago>the typical fan of The Weather Channel is probably wondering why everyone is talking about weather happening underground all of a sudden. Or radical leftists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground
- zevyoura 14y agoIt's worth noting that's not coincidental: both came out of the University of Michigan.
- davidw 14y agoI remember turning on the weather channel in high school, and the person would always stand in front of the west coast, blather on about the east coast at length, and then dedicate a few seconds to the west: "it's going to be sunny in most of California (no kidding), with massive snowstorms in eastern Washington which may or may not isolate the entire state, now back to you Bob".
- wensing 14y agoUp until 1992 the weathermen would still stand in front of the hurricane while blathering on about rainstorms in the midwest. Then Andrew happened and that changed everything.
- joezydeco 14y agoIf I was TWC, I'd use the network of private weather stations all feeding into WXUG to create hyper-local forecasts or even a mobile app that can push-alert you on the ETA of upcoming storms.
- graupel 14y agoWhat I've heard is that under (relatively new) ownership - meaning Comcast/NBC, there is a new push to expand revenue, and since weather.com already 'owns' the mass market, the only way to do that is to acquire, and will be to acquire more, revenue generating properties.
- karlshea 14y agoI definitely hope that the site continues on as it is, I love the sheer amount of data that's available.
- maxerickson 14y agoWeather.gov also does a nice job. They even have modern stuff like short urls: http://weather.gov/20500 http://weather.gov/20500
- mhurron 14y agoThe only thing they're missing is something like Weather Undergrounds easy radar map. That provided XML for the forecast might come in handy for something I was going to do though.
- brownbat 14y agoThere's an opportunity out there for someone to make a weather site with a stripped down interface.
- ReadEvalPost 14y agoI've a feeling Joel Spolsky's comment on the 80/20 rule applies to weather sites: "80% of the people use 20% of the features. [...] Unfortunately, it's never the same 20%."
- jonknee 14y agoWith weather it should be pretty simple. Temp and odds of precipitation are the two biggies. Have nice radar/sat images/loops easily accessible. Put the other stuff farther down.
- wensing 14y agoYep. Where it gets complicated is when the situation changes and storms erupt. Then what?
- jonknee 14y agoThat's where the good radar/sat stuff comes in. Wunderground does a good job at this, their stuff is very customizable. Lately I have been digging the Dark Sky app, weather at its most simple. It tackles very short term forecasts with specificity (it's going to rain in 8 minutes). I live in Florida so I know it's going to be hot, the only question for me is rain.
- wensing 14y agoThat's exactly what we've attempted to do / have done with Stormpulse.
- gergles 14y ago$280 a year is an absolute joke for a weather site for an individual user.
- jonstjohn 14y agoI run my own niche weather site http://www.climbingweather.com http://www.climbingweather.com that focuses on weather for climbing areas in the United States. It's not full-featured like Weather Underground, but I've often wondered if it would be worth my time to generalize it for a larger audience. This story somewhat inspires me to give it a shot.
- wensing 14y agoIf you ever want to talk about bootstrapping a weather startup, shoot me a line.
- porterhaney 14y agoBoth of you gents are doing some neat things with the weather. We also do some ski centric forecasting @ http://www.famousinternetskiers.com/weather/ http://www.famousinternetskiers.com/weather/
- yukoncornelius 14y agoI'm a mountaineer and never knew of these sites. Absolutely thrilled to see them on HN. Also, I'd pay for a user friendly data centric weather app focused on ski, climb, and outdoor activity weather reporting. I've been using nws.noaa.gov and weather.unisys.com for years and the UI is lacking. Just installed the free climbingweather.com app!!
- jonstjohn 14y agoNice! Thanks for downloading the app! My next front burner project involves another niche weather site but focused on outdoors more generally. The outdoor climbing community is relatively small, so although I get decent traffic to the site, I'd like to do something a bit larger. I'm also working on a Python library that interfaces with the national weather service for daily and hourly forecasts. It's about 95% done, although that last 5% can be tough.
- mikegreenberg 14y ago
- laconian 14y agoOh shit. Good for Wunderground, bad for me. I can't stand weather.com
- billeh 14y agoI hope they carry over the WunderMap. Of all the radars I've browsed, theirs is definitely the quickest, and has all sorts of layers to customize it with. (As well as a multitude of station readings.) It looks like they'll be keeping the Wunderground site as-is, but I've learned from past experiences that those kinds of statements don't hold up too well down the road ..
- jrockway 14y agoThat's too bad. I always liked the raw radar imagery. (OK, not really raw, but the same images that real forecasters get.) The Weather Channel is too mainstream; all their imagery is editorialized and dumbed down for an audience that just wants to know if it's going to rain today. I guess I will have to write a quick perl script to generate my own images now.
- mistercow 14y ago>The Weather Channel is too mainstream; all their imagery is editorialized and dumbed down for an audience that just wants to know if it's going to rain today. Not to mention that their forecasts are presented in a way that is statistically incoherent. Look at their hourly forecasts, then click to break down by 15 minute intervals. It is common to see things like "rain during 2:00-3:00 = 30%", and then also have something like 50% during one of the 15 minute intervals within that time range. I have yet to come up with a hypothesis for what those percentages could mean, and have that scenario be possible.
- mertd 14y agoPurely speculating, but it may be the expected duration of rain. So 30% in one hour means on the average it will rain 18 minutes within that hour and 50% of 15 mins would be 7.5 rainy minutes. My real guess is that they have independent models for different time resolutions.
- wtvanhest 14y ago30% chance of rain actually means 30% of the area is projected to have rain covering it rather than there being a 30% chance you will be rained on. An unlikely, but theoretically possible way to get 50% inside of 15 minute interval but 20% over an hour would be if the model prodicted very widespread rain in a band moving over an area and time weighted the percentage.
- mhurron 14y ago> 30% chance of rain actually means 30% of the area is projected to have rain covering it Common misconception. The Chance of precipitation is actually stating that historically, given these conditions x% of days produced precipitation. It is a statement of the odds that it will rain at all. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/854/what-does-it-mean-when-x-percent-chance-of-rain-is-predicted http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/854/what-does-it-me...
- pgrote 14y agoWow. I am crestfallen. Loved the service for years and have been a paying member for a while. Weather underground did a great job of making historical and trending weather information available. They do a great job of supporting local weather blogs, too. I wonder how long until the "integration" occurs and it is just a memory.
- wglb 14y agoWell, after trying out stormpulse, wunderground seems kind of, well, less interesting.
- wensing 14y agoWell, thanks! :)
- cs702 14y agoAccording to the announcement, the acquisition will "make both wunderground.com and weather.com stronger," so Wunderground fans have nothing to worry about. Right? :-(
- RedwoodCity 14y agoNooh, now only big weather will tell us our meteorological future. First ObamaCare and now this. This country has lost its way.
- droithomme 14y agoThat is really unfortunate. Weather Underground actually has the weather, the Weather Channel on the other hand is just crap. Obviously this is another "acquisition" that is intended solely and transparently at eliminating an agile competitor who makes a better product.
- wensing 14y agoI don't think Weather Channel was threatened by Wunderground's market share. A more plausible explanation I've heard is to reduce competition for advertisers in the weather space.
- ihsw 14y agoBut competition is good.
- wahsd 14y agoweatherspark.com That will surly suit your fancy
- dfc 14y agoI concur, weatherspark is awesome. My only complaint is that the documentation is a little lacking for some of the advanced charts. Does anyone know if NWS has a good API?
- subwindow 14y agoIt's pretty good. Last time I looked (3-4 years ago), the hard part was getting decent radar data/images.
- jonstjohn 14y agoThere are number of different ways to access the NWS data and graphs - not surprisingly it is hard to discover them! They do have an XML web service for daily and hourly forecasts http://graphical.weather.gov/xml/ http://graphical.weather.gov/xml/ but you can also download binary files that contain all the same weather elements for the US. I'm actually close to completing a python library that will be open source and provide an easy way to access the NWS national digital forecast database.
- natex 14y agoFor those looking for an alternative: http://weatherspark.com/# http://weatherspark.com/#
- sxcurry 14y agoAs a PWS (Personal Weather Station) contributor (KORTALEN1) to wunderground for many years, this concerns me. I live in Rural Oregon and the local PWS's provide a much needed micro look at local weather. Plus, I rely on wunderground's great radar presentation and access to the local Scientific Forecaster discussion. I worry that this kind of detailed scientific data and analysis will start to be lost in the inevitable dumbing down that will come.
- superuser2 14y agoWunderground just repackages National Weather Service data. If you can forgive the 90s design, weather.gov is perfect.
- AmazingBytecode 14y agoI can't believe they sold out, I thought they were underground!
- yellowbkpk 14y agoI imagine they bought wunderground for the Personal Weather Stations. They have thousands of people sending them data in real time from their personal weather stations. I bet if someone were to quickly make an equivalent API that collected all this data from these users and presented it in a similar fashion, they'd draw a lot of those PWS contributors away from NBC/Weather Channel.
- tmzt 14y agoDidn't this happen with Escient CDDB and FreeDB? You can't assume the community will keep providing you data when there's a plug-in replacement.
- c0nsumer 14y agoI understand the lament over wunderground.com being sold, but have any of you checked out what the National Weather Service offers? It's been my go-to site for years, is pretty spot on, has no-nonsense text based emergency notifications, makes it easy to hop over to hydrographic data, and a bunch of other things. Today I just happened across this prediction format which is about all I could hope for as well: http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=42.62840&lon=-83.0209&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=graphical http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=42.62840&lo...
- karlshea 14y agoThat's pretty awesome. My-Cast for iOS presents something similar when you're in landscape mode.
- bburky 14y agoWow. That's great. I may use that from now on. Graphs are much more convenient for answering "when today will it probably rain"? And all the other graphs provide really nice context.
- runn1ng 14y agoOn the topic of weather sites: I really prefer http://yr.no http://yr.no website lately. (Don't be fooled by .no, it's based in Norway, but they cover the whole world) My inner geek likes the most the hour-by-hour weather graphs: http://www.yr.no/place/Czech_Republic/Prague/Prague/hour_by_hour.html http://www.yr.no/place/Czech_Republic/Prague/Prague/hour_by_... - and the statistics page - http://www.yr.no/place/Czech_Republic/Prague/Prague/statistics.html http://www.yr.no/place/Czech_Republic/Prague/Prague/statisti...
- babs474 14y agoCheck this site out: http://www.my-cast.com/#California http://www.my-cast.com/#California Pannable, Zoomable animated radar and satellite cloud map. I think it's the best site for monitoring severe weather.
- runn1ng 14y agoIt seems US-based and the temperatures are in Fahrenheit, while I am from Europe and prefer Celsius :)
- abrowne 14y agoWhen I found Yr.no a few months ago I liked it, but it only is a forecast -- at least for a US location -- and I need current conditions as well!
- runn1ng 14y agoOh, that's true, I haven't actully noticed it.
- telecuda 14y agoThe Weather Channel has been going through a lot of restructuring and making big improvements over the past 3 years. Knowing Jeff Masters and his passion for the Weather Underground format, I do believe this has more to do with The WxChannel leveraging Wunderground.com's treasure trove of data, including personal weather stations. Also, Jeff's Tropical Update blogs and others truly are are high-quality content that will help the general public's (weather.com's audience) understanding of severe storms. Weather Underground was kind enough to point its users to our recently-retired http://www.onestorm.org/ http://www.onestorm.org/ for hurricane planning.
- jlarocco 14y agoCan anybody explain what Wunderground and TWC offer above the NWS? They're both just calling the NWS API and wrapping it in ads, right? Do either of them do any kind of additional analysis or processing to make the forecasts more accurate? The few times I've checked they're always been mirroring the weather.gov data. The government is known for being clunky, but I've always thought they did a pretty good job here [1], though I did like their old layout a little better. [1] http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?textField1=40.0149856&textField2=-105.27054559999999 http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?textField1=40.01498...
- reidmain 14y agoWeather Underground did gather data from a variety of sources (http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/index.asp http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/index.asp) and displayed more fine grain results that the "regular" person who cares about weather would never look at. I have Weather Underground, The Weather Network and the default Apple Weather app (which pulls from Yahoo I believe) and I always found Weather Underground to be more accurate on both a large scale and in their hourly reports.
- bradleyland 14y agoI hope they keep the ad-free subscription model. I've been a paying member for years. Browsing weather ad-free is such a relief.
- frankydp 14y agoGreatest feature of wunder is access to local station streams like this http://weather.barryt.org/wdl/index.html http://weather.barryt.org/wdl/index.html http://weather.barryt.org/ http://weather.barryt.org/ Just some guy that loves weather.
- jlgreco 14y agoI really hope they keep the wunderground telnet server running. I find that thing invaluable.
- ikawe 14y agowow: If you're using HTTPS Everywhere please disable it for GoogleMaps since it makes the authorization request fail. Tools Menu -> Add Ons -> Extensions -> HTTPS Everywhere -> Options -> Search for 'GoogleMaps' -> Click on the green check mark to turn it into a red x. It's too bad I can't use their service with HTTPS everywhere, but awesome that it's a user experience they considered.
- hudibras 14y agoIt's interesting to compare the almost-unanimous condemnation of this sale with that of other HN articles about acquisitions. Not even one 'attaboy, Jeff' comment for the founder cashing out? I wonder what the response would have been if the buyer was Google, not TWC.
- weatherfan 14y agoweather channel bought weatherbonk.com a few years ago, then shut it down. hope this doesn't happen to wunderground.