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 AccuWeather headquarters inFerguson Township, Pennsylvania | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Meteorology |
| Genre | Weather forecasting |
| Founded | 1962; 63 years ago (1962) |
| Founder | Joel Myers |
| Headquarters | , United States |
Key people | Joel Myers (executive chairman) Steven Smith (CEO) |
| Services |
|
Number of employees | 500+[1] |
| Website | accuweather |
AccuWeather, Inc. is a private-sector American media company that provides commercialweather forecasting services. AccuWeather was founded in 1962 byJoel N. Myers, then aPennsylvania State University graduate student working on a master's degree inmeteorology. His first customer was agas company inPennsylvania. While running his company, Myers also worked as a member of Penn State's meteorology faculty. The company adopted the name 'AccuWeather' in 1971.
AccuWeather is headquartered inFerguson Township, just outside ofState College, Pennsylvania, with offices at 80 Pine Street inManhattan's Financial District in addition toWichita,Kansas, andOklahoma City,Oklahoma. Internationally, AccuWeather has offices inTokyo,Beijing,Seoul, andMumbai.
AccuWeather provides weather forecasts, warnings, data and a handful of other weather-related services. The company is best known for the eponymous website, app, and TV channel. Their brand is marketed as being more accurate than competitors, as is implied by their name and backed up by several studies.[2] AccuWeather provides some free services funded by advertisements, and some revenue is generated through a tiered subscription model which unlocks certain features.
NOAA foundational weather data is one of 190 sources that AccuWeather uses as inputs into its proprietary and patented Forecast Engine (SWIFT), which also uses AI, 250 patents, the expertise of more than 100 meteorologists, and over 60 years of intellectual capital to generate forecasts and warnings.[3] Weather observations and data are gathered by theNational Weather Service and meteorological organizations outside the United States, as well as from non-meteorological organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the US armed forces. In 2024, AccuWeather employed around 400 people, more than 100 of whom are operational meteorologists.[4]
AccuWeather also operates a 24/7 weather channel known asThe AccuWeather Network included with various cable providers and streaming services. The network broadcasts a combination of live and pre-recorded national and regional weather forecasts, analysis of ongoing weather events, and weather-related news, in-between local weather segments. The network's studio and master control facilities are based at their headquarters nearState College, Pennsylvania.[5] In 2006, AccuWeather acquired WeatherData, Inc. of Wichita. Renamed AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions in 2011, the Wichita facility now[when?] houses AccuWeather's specialized severe weather forecasters.[citation needed] AccuWeather's B2B services were rebranded as AccuWeather For Business in June 2020.[6]
As of June 2023, Steven R. Smith is CEO having taken over the position from company founder Dr. Joel N. Myers who became executive chairman.[7]Joel Myers' brother Evan Myers was Chief Operating Officer until 2020[8] and Senior Vice President. His other brother,Barry Lee Myers, was chief executive officer from 2007 to January 1, 2019.[9]
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The regular weather provider forBloomberg Television and many other media outlets, AccuWeather also provides guest commentary on major TV networks. AccuWeather, through theUnited Stations Radio Networks (previously throughWestwood One until 2009), also provides weather for over 800 radio stations and over 700 newspapers, includingWINS inNew York City andWBBM inChicago. During severe-weather episodes, AccuWeather employees have been called upon by television journalists such asLarry King,[10]Geraldo Rivera,[11] andGreta van Susteren[12] for expert commentary. AccuWeather's broadcast meteorologistJim Kosek became an internet sensation in 2010 due to what the company describe as his "all-out, manic style" announcements, e.g. of a blizzard forecast as a "snowmaggedon".[13] Other well known AccuWeather meteorologists are Bernie Rayno, Brittany Boyer, Geoff Cornish and Melissa Constanzer. AccuWeather's Chief Meteorologist is Jonathan Porter.Elliot Abrams retired from AccuWeather in 2019 after working at AccuWeather for more than 50 years.[14]
AccuWeather produces local weather videos each day for use on their own website, on the Local AccuWeather Network, on wired Internet, and onmobile application and websites.[15] The mobile application has a minute-by-minute forecast[16] and also collectscrowd-sourced weather observations.[17] The company is also active in the areas ofconvergence[15] anddigital signage.[18] They have added auser-contributed video section to their photo gallery.
In 2015, AccuWeather entered into a joint venture with the Chinese company Huafeng Media Group, receiving the sole rights to deliver forecasts made by theChina Meteorological Administration, a government agency that controls Huafeng.[19]
Besides its forecasting services to individual consumers, AccuWeather performs weather-relatedpredictive analytical services for businesses, such as determining how weather conditions have influenced past sales history and advising businesses on adapting their sales strategy for future weather events.[20]
Starting in 2005, AccuWeather offeredThe Local AccuWeather Channel as adigital subchannel to television stations.[21] By 2021, the service had been quietly discontinued.[22] AccuWeather continues to provide local weather content to noncommercialMilwaukee PBS stationWMVT-DT3 under a separate agreement.[23]
In 2015,Verizon FiOS replacedThe Weather Channel with a new 24/7 all-weather television network called "The AccuWeather Channel". This followed earlier negotiations among AccuWeather, The Weather Channel, andDirecTV. The AccuWeather Network is a separate operation from "The Local AccuWeather Channel", which continues to run in selected markets across the country. It became the third 24/7 weather network to launch on American television, after The Weather Channel in 1982 andWeatherNation TV in 2011.[24] The AccuWeather Network is also carried on Spectrum TV, DIRECTV, Frontier, and on Philo and FuboTV streaming services. On August 1, 2018, the AccuWeather Network began on DIRECTV nationwide.
In July 2021, AccuWeather announced a companionover-the-top channel,AccuWeather Now, that will focus mainly onviral videos and sharedsocial media content.[22]
AccuWeather created a unified and proprietaryapparent temperature system known as "The AccuWeather Exclusive RealFeel Temperature" and has used the quantity in its forecasts and observations. The formula for calculating this value[25] incorporates the effects oftemperature,wind,humidity, sunshine intensity, cloudiness, precipitation, andelevation on thehuman body, similar to the rarely used (butpublic domain)wet-bulb globe temperature. AccuWeather has been granted aUnited States patent on The RealFeel Temperature,[26] but the formula is atrade secret and has not been reviewed by other meteorological authorities. In response to AccuWeather's "RealFeel",The Weather Channel introduced their "FeelsLike" temperature reading.[27]
AccuWeather acquired air pollution startup Plume Labs in 2022.[28] Plume labs started in 2014, as an air pollution visualization and forecasting service. Data is gathered through government controlled stations and individual contributors.[29] It gradually started offering street by street level prediction ofAQI. It also sells Flow, a pocket-sized device to measure AQI.[30] Due to sales volume, more Flow devices report AQI than government stations. Although government stations report AQI with greater accuracy.
After the acquisition, in spring of 2023, all Flow device sales were suspended.[31]
In April 2012, AccuWeather drastically shortened the range of their publicly available historical data from 15 years to 1 year. They also began increasing the range of their forecast from 15 days to 25 days, 45 days, and (by 2016) to 90 days. These hyper-extended forecasts have been compared to actual results several times and shown to be misleading, inaccurate, and sometimes less accurate than simple predictions based on National Weather Service averages over a 30-year period.[8][32] It is generally accepted that the upper limit on how far one can reliably forecast is between one and two weeks, a limit based on both limits in observation systems and thechaotic nature of the atmosphere.[8][33][34]
An informal assessment conducted byJason Samenow in 2013 atThe Washington Post asserted that AccuWeather's forecasts at the 25-day range were often wrong by as many as ten degrees Fahrenheit, no better than random chance and that the forecasts missed half of the fourteen days of rain that had occurred during the month of the assessment.[35] AccuWeather responds that it does not claim absolute precision in such extremely long forecasts and advises users to only use the forecast to observe general trends in the forecast period,[36] but this contrasts with the way the forecasts are presented.[37] An assessment from thePost determined that the 45-day forecasts were not even able to predict trends accurately, and that, although the forecasts did not decrease in accuracy with time, the forecasts were so far off even in the short range as to be useless.[37] ThePost commissioned another assessment fromPenn State University professorJon Nese, comparing several more cities to AccuWeather's predictions; that assessment, while acknowledged as being limited to a single season, acknowledged that AccuWeather's forecasts were of value in short-range forecasting while also noting that their long-range forecasts beyond one week were less accurate than climatological averages.[32]
TheNational Weather Service, which provides large amounts of the data that AccuWeather repackages and sells for profit, also provides that same information for free by placing it in thepublic domain. AccuWeather said NOAA foundational weather data is one of 190 sources that AccuWeather uses as inputs into our proprietary and patented Forecast Engine (SWIFT), which also uses AI, 250 patents, the expertise of more than 100 meteorologists, and over 60 years of intellectual capital to generate our forecasts and warnings.[3]
On April 14, 2005, U.S. SenatorRick Santorum (R-PA) introduced the "National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005" in theU.S. Senate. The legislation would have forbidden the National Weather Service from providing any such information directly to the public, and the legislation was generally interpreted as an attempt by AccuWeather to profit off of taxpayer-funded weather research by forcing its delivery through private channels. AccuWeather denies this and maintains it never intended to keep weather information out of the hands of the general public.[38] The bill did not come up for a vote. Santorum received campaign contributions from AccuWeather's president, Joel Myers.[39] AccuWeather maintains that itdoes not agree with the view, and AccuWeather has not suggested, that the National Weather Service (NWS) should fully commercialize its operations.[3]
On October 12, 2017, PresidentDonald Trump nominated AccuWeather CEOBarry Lee Myers, the younger brother of the company's founder, to head the National Weather Service's parent administration, theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was noted that unlike 11 of the previous 12 NOAA administrators, Myers lacks an advanced scientific degree, instead holding bachelor's and master's degrees in business and law[40] even though he ran AccuWeather as a successful, profitable company for 12 years.[41] Barry Myers stepped down as CEO of AccuWeather on January 1, 2019, and completely divested himself of any ownership of AccuWeather in accordance with his pledge to theOffice of Government Ethics and the U.S. Senate. After two years of inaction on the nomination, Myers withdrew his consideration for nomination on November 12, 2019, due to ill health.[42] Myers sent aletter toThe Washington Post in 2019 to address these allegations of sexual harassment, which the company denied.[43]
In August 2017, security researcher Will Strafach intercepted traffic from the AccuWeatheriPhone app to discover that it inadvertently sent location information to Reveal Mobile through a faultySDK, even when customers have not given permission to share location information.ZDnet independently verified this information.[44] AccuWeather stated that it did not know the app was tracking location information without users' consent and that it did not use the data in any way and released an update to theApp Store which removed the Reveal Mobile SDK.[45]
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