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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFans Howl After Weather Site Buys Out Rival
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and BRIAN STELTER
Published: July 3, 2012
Its stormy out there.
The announcement on Monday that the Weather Channel Companies, owners of televisions Weather Channel and weather.com, would buy one of its rivals, Weather Underground, set off howls of displeasure on social media platforms and around water coolers across the nation. The purchase price was not disclosed.
In the eyes of Weather Undergrounds ardent fans, the Weather Channel appears to represent the wrong kind of weather information: personality-driven sunniness and hype, they say, rather than the pure science of data. As Mike Tucker, a computer professional in New Hampshire, put it on Facebook, reacting to news of the deal: Nooooooooooooooooo! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
The controversy illustrates the deep national divide between those people who just want to know if its going to rain, and people who really, really, care about the data underlying the weather. Christopher Maxwell, a manager at a solar energy company in Richmond, Va., is in the really-really-cares-about-the-weather camp. He said he saw the Weather Channel deal as a sad sellout for Weather Underground.
It seems to happen all the time, he said. Something great gets invented and sold in the United States, and it gets bought up and destroyed.
Weather Underground was founded in 1995 in Ann Arbor, where it grew out of the University of Michigans online weather database. The name was a winking reference to the radical group that also had its roots in Ann Arbor. Mr. Maxwell said he appreciated Weather Undergrounds fanatical devotion to data, and how it drew information from so many thousands of weather stations run by users that he is able to determine microclimates of variation that can prove important in getting the most out of a new solar installation.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/us/as-weather-channel-buys-weather-underground-fans-fear-change.html?hp
malaise
(267,824 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)from the article:
Weather Undergrounds devotion to weather data has brought the site about 10 million unique visitors a month, according to the measurement firm ComScore, and has helped it to remain an independent company for the better part of two decades. A similar site, WeatherBug, draws 21 million visitors a month. (WeatherBug is owned by Earth Networks.)
Both sites, however, are dwarfed by Weather.com and the other properties owned by the Weather Channel, which is owned by a consortium that includes Comcast, Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group. The Weather Channel sites draw almost 50 million visitors a month. But only half of Weather Undergrounds users also use Weather.com in a given month, which might be considered a silent protest of sorts.
Every so often one of the bosses of the Weather Channel had tried to buy Weather Underground, company officials said, and every so often the site politely declined. But this time was different.
intheflow
(28,407 posts)Weather Underground to be disassembled in 3... 2...
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)Odin2005
(53,521 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)This is a bummer. More RW spin on everything.
Could be they didn't like the Weather Channel guys in the past supporting climate change in their reports.
This planet really is a lunatic asylum. No escape, either.
greytdemocrat
(3,299 posts)byeya
(2,842 posts)Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)You have to click through everything to find stuff. I like Underground, but I don't think
they have a 10 day forecast
Chan790
(20,176 posts)Mine has never been completely accurate one time since they started doing a 10-day...and that's between living in DC, MD, VA, CT, PA and NYC. Not one time have I seen a completely-accurate 10-day Weather Channel forecast.
Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)idea of what it will be like.
Nevernose
(13,081 posts)It would be right all the time!
Chan790
(20,176 posts)He says the weather is predictable 6 months in advance.
Hot in the AM, breaking to hotter in the afternoon, slightly cooler in the evening. Cold overnight with a chance of rain 5% after 2AM.
I will say it's the same in every desert in the world. Hot days with no cloud-cover make for comparatively cold nights and whatever precipitation falls, usually falls when there's nobody awake to see it.
Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)bananas
(27,509 posts)It does seem to give the most accurate temperature as this review says:
http://m.lifehacker.com/5802727/myweather-is-a-customizable-weather-app-for-iphone-android-and-online
Response to Laura PourMeADrink (Reply #3)
bupkus This message was self-deleted by its author.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)week.
Myweather.com shows this coming Sun, Mon, and Tues
Temps: 94, 87, 81
Rain: Scattered Showers, Rain, Light Rain (Respectively)
Weather.com shows:
Temps: 98, 96, 96
Rain: 0% Chance, 0% chance, 20% Chance
Uvalde, TX
This won't be good. While the Weather Channel is OK, I prefer the facts over window dressing. All I want to know is the current temperature, humidly, wind speed and what I can expect during the next week or so, for certain locations. i.e., Localized weather conditions.
You can keep the glitter and the useless, wide area, Farmers Almanac style forecasting.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
fredamae
(4,458 posts)BumRushDaShow
(127,317 posts)intheflow
(28,407 posts)geckosfeet
(9,644 posts)BumRushDaShow
(127,317 posts)Weather Channel used to be excellent. Then something happened and they started programming on the cheap - with more and more "long form" broadcasting and rarely breaking in during those programs, for coverage of ongoing or imminent extreme weather events. Then NBC Universal bought TWC and finally Comcast bought NBC Universal - afterwhich they have gone full speed ahead rebranding TWC with all things "NBC". I mean, why do I care about the Today show and political "news" on a weather-centric site? I'll go right to that site instead.
They'll probably end up using WU's hobbyist weather station data to fill in the point-forecast blanks in the TWC forecast pages.
Siwsan
(26,177 posts)That's the best weather map I've ever seen. The storm reports (snow depth, rain accumulation) aren't on the weather.com site. Or, if the are, I can't find them.
My biggest complaint about the weather channel is THEY DON'T REPORT THE LOCAL WEATHER! Oh, sometimes they do a crawler but when I wake up in the middle of the night and the weather is turning bad, I'd LOVE to be able to see what's coming. I really don't give a rats ass about what the Coast Guard does to train people.
intheflow
(28,407 posts)I live in a tornado alley and use it whenever those nasty storms pop up that could spin something even nastier. I have never, ever been able to find that kind of local info on TWC web site. It's a nightmare to navigate, and you're right about it not reporting local weather in most of the country.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)Has been for years. This just breaks my heart. The weather channel sucks for this kind of info.
Auntie Bush
(17,528 posts)I just look out the window to see what's up. Well, That's a Romney lie if I ever heard one. Speaking of looking out the window...it's getting really dark! I think we're about to have a nasty thunderstorm (scare the daylights out of my dog) an ruin all the fireworks.
intheflow
(28,407 posts)CreekDog
(46,192 posts)weather.com, you can't even figure out where the station they are providing temperatures from is located.
i hope they keep weather underground as is, but if not, i may have to use NWS/NOAA instead.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)Eff 'em, just another website loaded with ads for garbage.
surrealAmerican
(11,340 posts)I like the new forecast page layout, too. It's easier to find what I'm looking for now.
tosh
(4,422 posts)morningglory
(2,336 posts)experience to know when to gas up and get cash and pack the important papers. Weather.com is all about a hysterical presentation bent on keeping people tuned in. They try to stampede as many people as possible to Home Depot to buy plywood, every chance they get. You see it when a storm makes landfall, and is visibly breaking up: the talking heads go on saying "Hurricane Beulah is expected to make landfall around midnight (12 hours from now), so stay tuned right here...". That is no help when a time comes to evacuate people.
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)I love weather underground
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)of animated ad bullshit, endless hurricane hype, stories about rescued kittens, and ski patrol adventures. Pretty much everything except WEATHER. Goddamn it.
kdmorris
(5,649 posts)heaven05
(18,124 posts)money, i bet a lot of pressure and with all the bad weather in the pike(global warming) the truth can't be told, I'm awake.
JHB
(37,132 posts)Promoting 'competition' by buying out their competition since the Age of Reagan.
If WC had really wanted to capture the segment of the market served by Wunderground, they were perfectly capable of setting up a division that did a better job of serving the interests of the "data people." That's capitalism, right? The spirit of competition?
Naww, f*** that! That would cost money and have the risk of not working. Why go to all that work (and do that job creation) when you can just buy out the other guys?
And really, who's going to complain about it now? It's been standard practice since Mergermania.
What's really important is that more money be shot upward to the 0.01% (including, in this case, Mittens himself as a Bain shareholder), and the hell with "serving the market".
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)It seems to happen all the time, he said. Something great gets invented and sold in the United States, and it gets bought up and destroyed.
The continued takeover and assimilation of every damn thing by Wall St is very displeasing to me. One giant backscratching orgy of wasted money, wasted environments, wasted talents and wasted futures. All pushing for less unfiltered information sources to the masses, all demanding controlled messages and consumer friendly packaging. Working out well for the greedy bastards I'll say that.
csziggy
(34,120 posts)If you put in your city & state or your zip code under "Customize Your Weather.gov" and click "Remember Me" it will give you a quick weather report on the left instead.
If you want a more extended forecast, at the top under "Home" enter your info into the box marked "Local forecast by "City, St" or ZIP code" and that will take you to a page just for your area. This page 'expires' and cannot be permanently bookmarked.
For a permanent link scroll to the bottom and look for the link "Zone Area Forecast for {your area}" and click on that. The page you will arrive at is a permanent link or for a more graphic forecast click on the link at the top left that begins with NWS and has your city listed. I keep those pages bookmarked for quick access. The NWS {city} page will have links to warnings for your area and other links to important weather information for your area.
evilhime
(326 posts)and thanks for the permanent links. Wunderground sadly has been slipping of late - service down, inaccurate numbers etc. So I have been going to NOAA when I need real information as opposed to just a quick temperature/humidity check.
JaneQPublic
(7,113 posts)Whenever there is extreme weather, all the other weather services report that "The National Weather Service has issued a..." So why not just go directly to the source?
klook
(12,134 posts)-- the National Weather Service. A friend who used to work at the Weather Channel told me all they did was get the raw data from NWS / NOAA and pretty it up for TV & web presentation. Probably true of all of them, so you're just choosing between interfaces, presentation styles, advertising choices, and so on.
MyWeather.com is an excellent choice. I'm starting to use that one now. Thanks to Laura PourMeADrink for the recommendation!
another weather underground fan here - need good beach reports at the beach. It is hard to find information on the weather.com. will check out the myweather site now.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)Glad others are pissed as well.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)GoCubsGo
(32,061 posts)Boooooooo!!!!
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Why send clicks to Bain capital or other private corporations when you don't have to?
aquart
(69,014 posts)TWC with its bloated, memory-guzzling pretentious apps to eat my beloved home of Jeff Masters blog??? The place I spent all the days we waited for Katrina and then its aftermath?
I am dumbstruck with horror.
Lithos
(26,397 posts)Weather.com is wrong more than right... Wunderground is more right than wrong.
Completely agree with the sentiments... Facts over personalities.
L-