
Wunderground.com sold to The Weather Channel Companies  - kapkapkap
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2143
======
droithomme
That 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.

~~~
jberryman
I don't know... I think I'm "and nothing of value was lost" on this one.
Weather underground is spammy and terrible just like all the others.

Anyone know if there is a <http://time.is> for weather? Or someplace where I
can easily see weather conditions on a driving route? Really just anyplace
that has thought for more than half a second about the kind of weather info
people want and how to present it? I mean this is simple shit.

~~~
s-phi-nl
For something dead simple, there's <http://goingtorain.com/>

~~~
mileswu
Similar for the UK, is <http://www.raintoday.co.uk/>

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wensing
This 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?

~~~
ben1040
>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>

~~~
zevyoura
It's worth noting that's not coincidental: both came out of the University of
Michigan.

------
pgrote
Wow. 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.

------
jrockway
That'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
>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.

~~~
wtvanhest
30% 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
> 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-
me...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/854/what-does-it-mean-when-x-
percent-chance-of-rain-is-predicted)

~~~
wtvanhest
That site you provide (or cite) is the only one I can find that describes it
that way. Every other source describes the otherway which I still think is
correct:

NOAA: <http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ffc/?n=pop>

[http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/wadefine.h...](http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/wadefine.htm)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_of_precipitation>

~~~
mhurron
Even those links state the PoP is a measure of the chance that it will happen
at all. That is the historical measurement.

~~~
wtvanhest
No, that is the simplified explanation of how the average person should think
about it. We are talking about the definition and a possible way to get the
odd results the OP mentioned observing.

------
c0nsumer
I 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&lo...](http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=42.62840&lon=-83.0209&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=graphical)

~~~
bburky
Wow. 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.

------
yellowbkpk
I 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
Didn'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.

------
natex
For those looking for an alternative: <http://weatherspark.com/#>

~~~
lukev
Indeed. To the scientifically-minded, I find their graph-based model many
times easier to read and more thorough than any other source, wunderground
included.

------
wglb
Well, after trying out stormpulse, wunderground seems kind of, well, less
interesting.

~~~
wensing
Well, thanks! :)

------
cs702
According to the announcement, the acquisition will "make both
wunderground.com and weather.com stronger," so Wunderground fans have nothing
to worry about. Right? :-(

------
telecuda
The 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/> for hurricane planning.

------
jlarocco
Can 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=40.01498...](http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?textField1=40.0149856&textField2=-105.27054559999999)

~~~
reidmain
Weather Underground did gather data from a variety of sources
(<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.

------
runn1ng
On the topic of weather sites: I really prefer <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_...](http://www.yr.no/place/Czech_Republic/Prague/Prague/hour_by_hour.html)
\- and the statistics page -
[http://www.yr.no/place/Czech_Republic/Prague/Prague/statisti...](http://www.yr.no/place/Czech_Republic/Prague/Prague/statistics.html)

~~~
abrowne
When 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
Oh, that's true, I haven't actully noticed it.

------
sxcurry
As 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.

------
jonstjohn
I run my own niche weather site <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
If you ever want to talk about bootstrapping a weather startup, shoot me a
line.

~~~
porterhaney
Both of you gents are doing some neat things with the weather. We also do some
ski centric forecasting @ <http://www.famousinternetskiers.com/weather/>

~~~
yukoncornelius
I'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
Nice! 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.

------
karlshea
I definitely hope that the site continues on as it is, I love the sheer amount
of data that's available.

~~~
maxerickson
Weather.gov also does a nice job.

They even have modern stuff like short urls:

<http://weather.gov/20500>

~~~
mhurron
The 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.

------
billeh
I 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 ..

------
frankydp
Greatest feature of wunder is access to local station streams like this

<http://weather.barryt.org/wdl/index.html> <http://weather.barryt.org/>

Just some guy that loves weather.

------
hudibras
It'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.

------
ikawe
wow: 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.

------
bradleyland
I hope they keep the ad-free subscription model. I've been a paying member for
years. Browsing weather ad-free is such a relief.

------
brownbat
There's an opportunity out there for someone to make a weather site with a
stripped down interface.

~~~
ReadEvalPost
I'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
With 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
Yep. Where it gets complicated is when the situation changes and storms erupt.
Then what?

~~~
jonknee
That'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.

------
jlgreco
I really hope they keep the wunderground telnet server running. I find that
thing invaluable.

------
laconian
Oh shit. Good for Wunderground, bad for me. I can't _stand_ weather.com

------
weatherfan
weather channel bought weatherbonk.com a few years ago, then shut it down.
hope this doesn't happen to wunderground.

------
superuser2
Wunderground just repackages National Weather Service data. If you can forgive
the 90s design, weather.gov is perfect.

~~~
abrowne
Just replaced today* with a new design: <http://weather.gov/redesign>

* After being in preview for a while.

------
AmazingBytecode
I can't believe they sold out, I thought they were underground!

------
RedwoodCity
Nooh, now only big weather will tell us our meteorological future. First
ObamaCare and now this. This country has lost its way.

