Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumWunderground.com sold to The Weather Channel Companies
The wild ride that began in 1995
Back in 1995, when the newly created commercial Internet put up for sale domains with a ".com" designation, and Weather Underground, Inc. became the world's first commercial weather web site, I could not have anticipated the wild ride that brought us to where we are at today. We registered the 2,000th domain ever taken, "wunderground.com", in 1995, missing registering "weather.com " by a month. Later that year, a group of executives from The Weather Channel visited us in Ann Arbor, inquiring on how we might work together. No sale resulted, but over the years, The Weather Channel and Weather Underground have had a number of meetings to discuss a possible merger. Many other companies have inquired about buying us, but we have always opted to stay independent, in order to nurture our creative, alternative weather web site and keep breaking new ground. The company's growth was slow at first, since we never took venture capital money. We grew from 6 employees in 1999 to 20 in 2009. But in the past three years, Weather Underground entered into a rapid period of growth that saw our staff more than double to 57 people. With a swelling user base around the globe, and with demands for our services to be made available across so many new digital platforms like mobile phones and tablets, the board recognized the need for an even greater injection of resources, and the decision was made to merge with The Weather Channel Companies.
How will the merger with The Weather Channel improve wunderground?
The Weather Channel is committed to keeping the Weather Underground brand and the web site in its current form. Weather Underground CEO Alan Steremberg will remain in charge, and our meteorologists and developers will continue to create the ground-breaking weather products that we're renowned for. The plan is to make both wunderground.com and weather.com stronger, by sharing content and infrastructure. Many Weather Underground features, such as our Personal Weather Station data, WunderMap, and my blog, are scheduled to also appear on the weather.com web site in the coming months. My blog's main home will continue to be wunderground.com, and I have been asked to continue to write the same variety of science-based posts on hurricanes, extreme weather, and climate change that I've provided since 2005. I enjoy communicating weather science, and am pleased I will be able to do this for both wunderground and The Weather Channel, which has an audience about three times as large as wunderground's.
Figure 1. The original seven founders of wunderground.com, plus our first employee, circa 1998. In front, from left to right: Chris Schwerzler, Jeff Masters, Jeff Ferguson. In back: Dave Brooks, Alan Steremberg, Perry Samson, Chuck Prewitt, and Mike MacDonald.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,400 posts)eg: http://climatecrocks.com/2011/02/16/former-skeptic-weather-channels-ostro-reviews-this-wild-winter/
http://www.weather.com/encyclopedia/global/index.html
Whereas the deniers, including a founder, denounce it as an apostate: http://www.mrc.org/node/26336
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)rurallib
(62,471 posts)I just started using wunderground. But surely the weather channel will ruin it.
I am hot and in a grouchy mood.
BillyJack
(819 posts)I used to use the weather channel most of the time, until a few weeks ago when weather channel changed their format and LOADED it with tons of ads. Now it takes many, many clicks to get the same information that you could get with 2 or 3 clicks. Weather Underground shows me everything I need (and more) with 1 or 2 clicks. I'm very sorry to hear this news.
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)I would like to find maps of where the fronts will be in a few days, but I don't think they exist. Weather.com has the blandest descriptions of their maps, so I don't know what I am getting when I click on a map.
Weather.com does have some good stories, like last years' floods on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
joshcryer
(62,280 posts)Taps into the best radar data out there and gives you a live view of what's going on.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)msongs
(67,465 posts)joshcryer
(62,280 posts)...who simply use government data to get their data and they just regurgitate what the science based models tell them.
Weather Underground has been at the forefront of AGW and their data is impeccable.
I just hope this doesn't affect my Weather Underground Windows Widget. It's one click away from me and tells me exactly what the weather is doing.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)I hate the weather channel.