Weathering the Storm

Last January, weather.com officially spun off from the Weather Channel, although the two staffs still interact daily. In fact, they work in the same building north of downtown Atlanta. Wilson, 43, whose previous job at the Weather Channel was to come up with new ventures, such as providing weather information for radio stations and newspapers, says that weather.com is far and away the company's most important and most successful new business. It has taken the trusted source for weather information on cable TV and extended that brand well beyond the home -- to desktop computers at work, to laptops in transit, to cell-phones, pagers, and other wireless devices that people carry wherever they go. Having signed partnerships with Palm Computing, SkyTel, Sprint PCS, and other leading wireless-technology players, weather.com is poised to ride what many expect will be technology's next big wave. "The goal is to be the, capital T-H-E, weather source for consumers wherever they are," says Wilson.

Many Internet companies have goals just as ambitious as Wilson's. But few of those companies have executed on those goals as effectively as weather.com has. "Right now, a lot of Internet companies that have good ideas are not succeeding," says Alex Kaminsky, 38, the site's vice president of marketing. "They're laying people off, and they're losing money. We're not. We satisfy the needs of 12 million to 14 million unique users every month."

The Weather: What's in it for You?

To Wilson and her Web team, weather is anything but dry because, by nature, it is so dynamic. They understand that weather has the capacity to inspire or to spoil your day, and if you're unprepared for truly severe conditions, it even has the capacity to devastate. "I always find it interesting that people are surprised at how big weather.com is, because it seems clear to me that we have what it takes to make a great business on the Internet," Wilson says. "We provide compelling information that consumers want and need on a daily basis. Mother Nature creates the perfect product for us. Weather is relevant to everyone in the world, and it's constantly changing, so people need to keep coming back to us for the latest information."

Of course, as recently as the early 1980s, people didn't consume nearly as much information about the weather as they do today. Although weather was just as relevant back then, people simply didn't have instant access to the latest forecasts for both Nebraska and the Netherlands. What little information existed was either incomplete, dated, or both. That was before newspapers began devoting an entire page to weather coverage, complete with full-color graphics. So most people had no choice but to wait for weather updates on the radio, or, more likely, for the three-minute report on the local TV news, which meant that they had to get by on weather information just twice a day, during the morning and the evening broadcasts. If they wanted more, they went hungry.

On May 2, 1982, the Weather Channel went on the air and changed all that -- by offering weather-related news all day, every day. Instead of oddly cheery or mildly clownish weathermen, the Weather Channel offered unapologetic scientists who explained the weather in glorious detail. Despite gusts of widespread skepticism and downpours of derisive one-liners, the Weather Channel found an audience. Today, it is broadcast into more than 76 million homes throughout the United States and Latin America, one of its newest markets. It is one of the best-known media brands in the country.

The Weather Channel changed the weather-information landscape in a number of ways. Severe-storm coverage became riveting, breaking news, and the channel's meteorologists became minor celebrities. But the Weather Channel had a far more profound influence on mainstream culture. It didn't just feed farmers, pilots, and weather enthusiasts who had been hungry for more information. It created weather consumers by convincing ordinary people that they needed more weather information than they had been getting. "People now talk about high-pressure and low-pressure systems," says chief operating officer Todd Walrath, 34. "You can't imagine that conversation happening 20 years ago."

The Internet, says Wilson, has the potential to deepen the importance of weather even more. In a sense, it already has. According to a 1998 Pew Research Center study, more people go online to find weather information than to find any other type of news. Stock prices, sports scores, celebrity gossip -- they all take a backseat to forecasts. At the same time, the number of sites offering forecasts has multiplied. But none has rained on weather.com's parade. "The difference between us and other weather entities is that we have the science part down, but we're interested in how science helps people," says Walrath. "We know that weather is a part of everyone's life. The question is, Can we help them make that connection?"