Weather Underground is an American commercial weather service providing real-time weather information over the Internet. It provides weather reports for most major cities around the world on its website, as well as local weather reports for newspapers and third-party sites. Its information comes from the National Weather Service (NWS), and over 250,000 personal weather stations (PWS). The site is available in many languages, and customers can access an ad-free version of the site with additional features for an annual fee. In February 2024, Weather Underground and its parent company, The Weather Company, became controlled by Francisco Partners.
History The company is based in San Francisco, California and was founded in 1995 as an offshoot of the University of Michigan internet weather database. The name is a reference to the 1960s radical left-wing militant organization the Weather Underground, which also originated at the University of Michigan. The founder, Jeff Masters, would later go to say, regarding the naming decision, "I regretted that, immediately,". The military organization took its name from Bob Dylan's lyric "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", from his 1965 song "Subterranean Homesick Blues". The name, formerly UM-Weather, was changed to Weather Underground in 1991 due to feedback from the National Science Foundation in response to Perry Samson's proposal for funding. Weather Underground has since adopted the nickname Wunderground in addition to Weather Underground. Jeff Masters, a doctoral candidate in meteorology at the University of Michigan working under the direction of Professor Perry Samson, wrote a menu-based Telnet interface in 1991 that displayed real-time weather information around the world. In 1993, they recruited Alan Steremberg and initiated a project to bring Internet weather into K–12 classrooms. Weather Underground president Alan Steremberg wrote "Blue Skies" for the project, a graphical Mac Gopher client, which won several awards. When the Mosaic Web browser appeared, this provided a natural transition from "Blue Skies" to the Web.
In 1995 Weather Underground Inc. became a commercial entity separate from the university. It has grown to provide weather for print sources, in addition to its online presence. In 2005, Weather Underground became the weather provider for the Associated Press; Weather Underground also provides weather reports for some newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle. Alan Steremberg also worked on the early development of the Google search engine with Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In October 2008, Jeff Masters reported that the site was No. 2 for Internet weather information in 2008. In February 2010, Weather Underground launched FullScreenWeather.com (now a redirect to weather.com), a full screen weather Web tool with integrated mapping and mobile device use in mind. On July 2, 2012, The Weather Channel announced that it would acquire Weather Underground, which would become operated as part of The Weather Channel Companies, LLC, which was later renamed "The Weather Company". The Weather Underground web site continued to operate as a separate entity from The Weather Channel primary site, weather.com, with its existing staff retained. Third-party web analytics providers Alexa and SimilarWeb rated the site as the 117th and 98th most-visited site in the United States, respectively, as of July 2015. SimilarWeb rates the site as the second most visited weather website globally, attracting more than 47 million visitors per month. The Weather Company also used the site's San Francisco headquarters as a regional office. The site's popularity also helped launch a television show hosted by meteorologist Mike Bettes, which originally aired on The Weather Channel from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. ET. The show was renamed Weather Unfiltered on May 13, 2024 and moved to 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. as of October 29, 2024 as part of a major schedule adjustment for the network. On October 28, 2015, Jeff Masters noted that IBM had officially announced an agreement to acquire The Weather Company's mobile and cloud-based Web properties, including Weather Underground, WSI, weather.com, and also the Weather Company brand. The Weather Channel television service remained a separate entity, later sold to Entertainment Studios in 2018. The deal was finalized on January 29, 2016. On October 3, 2019, Jeff Masters announced that he would be leaving Weather Underground. On August 22, 2023, IBM agreed to sell The Weather Company to private equity firm Francisco Partners for an undisclosed sum. After the acquisition of the company was completed in February 2024, Weather Underground also became controlled by the American private equity firm.
Blogs Web logs (blogs) were one of the main features in Weather Underground, allowing users of the site to create blogs about weather, everyday life and anything else. Jeff Masters started the first blog on April 14, 2005, and he posts blog entries nearly every day. From 2007 through early 2017 Richard B. Rood wrote blogs on climate change and societal response, with new entries on a weekly basis. On October 14, 2016, the Wunderblog announced that it would be changing their name to Category 6, a name suggested by Jeff Masters. They decided on the name, because it "alludes to our deep fascination with all types of weather and climate extremes, including the many important facets of our changing climate", and "will provide all the insight and expert analysis needed to put the extreme events of our evolving 21st-century climate into context." On April 3, 2017 Weather Underground ended all Member blogs, WUMail, SMS alerts, NOAA Weather Radio rebroadcast and Aviation.
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