What Happened to Weather Underground on the Weather Channel

Well, Weather Channel and their overlords IBM have pretty much destroyed WeatherUnderground, which had been one of the better weather sites on the web. Nexrad apparently doesn't exist any more (well, the button is there, but it leads to a "oops this page is missing" message), they killed the personal webcams in December (recently brought them back but everyone has to recreate them), and I've seen reports of huge staff cuts. Heck, even the "contact us" button leads to a "page is missing" message.
WU had been my go-to site as part of my aviation pre-flight briefings. The website redesign is harder to use and not nearly as useful, but a number of the functions simply are not working.

Once again, a corporate buyout has resulting in a great little service ending up with a fork in it - it's done.
MtnMarcus Pre-takeoff checklist

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Well this sucks. I use them often too.
Tantalum Final Approach

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Yeah, The Weather Channel website is a complete disaster to use. I loved Weather Underground and I noticed recently it was a piece of crap also. Sucks. Luckily their app so far is still pretty decent so I can still use it through there
Bill Touchdown! Greaser! PoA Supporter

The WU app is presently TU.
"There was a problem connecting. Retry" and of course Retry does nothing.

Big corporate America, this is why we can't have nice things.
Justin M Line Up and Wait PoA Supporter

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JM

I also miss that they stopped recognizing icao locations in the search bar.
They just updated them:
Everskyward Experimenter PoA Supporter

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True. It was working yesterday, but not now. I have noticed the deterioration in the WU website as well.
Bill Touchdown! Greaser! PoA Supporter

And I actually liked the app enough to give them money for the no ads version. Oh well.
You would think that IBM as a technology company could figure out how to run a website. Makes you wonder about their other products.
Is this the service that aggregated data from hobbyists, who paid to install their own weather stations and connect them to the internet so that anyone could check the local weather in that neighborhood?
What a loss, if all those privately owned weather stations now go to waste.
TCABM Pattern Altitude

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IBM knows how to do that really, really well. They also know how to f* things up just enough to slowly kill something off when there's more potential in a different wholly owned subsidiary and still make it look like their hands are clean.
I wouldn't doubt it if the WU network of sensors is 'bought out' by WX Channel in the long run since the WX Channel brand is more recognizable than WU and the WU faithful will follow.
Chortle. I remember when IBM bought Rational (which bought Atria). The release notes for the release I installed was now an HTML file rather than a plaintext file. OK, technology moves on. When I bring the file up in the browser it tells me to go to the IBM documentation web site and type "G1024-9876" into the search field. IBM is obviously unclear on the concept of HYPERTEXT.
kyleb Final Approach PoA Supporter

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Drake the Outlaw

The Weather Channel HQ is a mile from my house. I know one of the behind the scenes people on one of the "big" shows. She and others I know who work there have been explaining that they are bleeding because of cable cutters and other market forces. Beyond that, they got too far from their mission and created a bunch of "reality" weather shows, which hurt their core subscribers. I'm not sure how much of that franchise will be around in a few years...

GMascelli and wsuffa like this.
That's the one. WU had a big crowd-sourcing business.Agree on the first point. I've seen, personally, one of the things they were going to kill off but sold to local investors to "save jobs". That's a long story.
WU and their network was bought by The Weather Company (the Weather Channel) and the whole thing was sold to IBM. So WU is already owned by WX Channel.

IBM bought them for the data and expertise. I have no doubt they were losing money - I suspect that Weather Company overpaid for WU, and IBM overpaid for the Weather Company.
Yup. Back in the day I had high hopes for their OS2, which also tanked. So much better than Windoze.
RJM62 Touchdown! Greaser!

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The Web version also lacks precipitation prediction amounts in the 10-day forecasts. They either show up as "0" or "--".

I reported this several weeks ago when the contact page still worked, but I guess they don't care.

Even as cheap as it is, I doubt I'll be renewing my ad-free subscription when it comes around. It's a shame. I think it was the best mass-market weather site out there.

Rich
charheep Line Up and Wait PoA Supporter

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I agree. It was my go to app, and was usually the most accurate one out there. Any suggestions for a replacement app?
Interesting, I use the "Storm" app on both my iPad and droid phone. It's driven by weather underground (I think). It still seems to be working fine.......
It's a great app.
RJM62 Touchdown! Greaser!

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Not yet. I've been looking, but haven't found any that I'd rate any better than "mediocre."
The Android app hasn't suffered quite as much as the Web site. Yet. I suspect they're working on it.

Rich
wrbix Pattern Altitude

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Agreed - my go to for initial planning days out.....and also to plan outdoor activities by hourly forecasts..
AggieMike88 Touchdown! Greaser!

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The original "I don't know it all" of aviation.

For a replacement, Windy.com is worth a look
Both my iOS app and URL for my desktop browser appear to be reporting current local conditions normally this morning. Current conditions and historical data is all I use it for.
asicer Final Approach PoA Supporter

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asicer

Wunderground may have been doomed regardless of whether they got bought by IBM or not, otherwise a similar competing service would have popped up by now.
Absolutely. Windy has terrific aviation features.
There are a couple of user-interface tricks to see these aviation features. The tricks are easy, but just not obvious if like me you've only tried Windy briefly.

For airport info:
the trick is to click on a map location where there's an airport (this is easier to do if you enable the display of airport locations). Clicking the map in this way brings up another page with a very nice meteogram along with METAR and TAF. It also has tabs for additional pages that have runway info, NOTAMS, and webcams.

For map portrayal of cloud heights, CAPE, etc:
you have to select these layers on the map menu, which looks elegant but wasn't obvious to me at first. Then click somewhere on the map to see the local value of cloud height or whatever you selected.
Windy is amazing. It's now my first stop for all my WX planning.
Dark Sky is a great app with very localized weather.
AggieMike88 Touchdown! Greaser!

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The original "I don't know it all" of aviation.

The location search box also recognizes ICAO codes.
Once it finds the airport, be sure to press the star icon so this airport is now on your favorite location list. Makes it easier to find the next time.
Love dark sky.. They also have a free API that allows for 1000 calls per day. I have it pulling local weather into my home automation system to display on a tablet in the house
Our airport, Desert Aire Regional (M94,) reports to WU. https://www.wunderground.com/weather/us/wa/desert-aire
James331 Ejection Handle Pulled

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That sucks, especially the webcams.
Ok alternative, but it does not have the ease of location that wunderground had/has
http://www.the-webcam-network.com

It's too bad with the money and man lower the Feds spend on dumb stuff they don't make a webcam network like they have in AK for the south.

http://avcams.faa.gov
Lots of airports have webcams that you don't need WU to see. As cheap as the technology is, it would be nice if most of them did.
My weather station at home still feeds to WU. I need to get it added to CWOP, although based on the temp graphs, I may need to replace it first, it seems to read too high, sigh.
Just finally posted my webcam in a couple other places as well.
I find WU to be next to useless for my local observations. If there is data they don't have for a station, rather than reporting it missing/unavailable, they just substitute the nearest place that has the info (typically your nearest METAR reporting facility) without really calling your attention to the fact that the data is for some other location.
wrbix Pattern Altitude

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I must be missing something - Windy has very nice looking graphics, but no legends to explain the data represented....at least as I'm doing it on my iPad. Any guidance appreciated.
CT4ME Cleared for Takeoff

Windy (sometimes called Windytv) has a weird interface, so it takes a bit of getting used to. But there is a lot there, and it has many aviation-specific features. First, you have to distinguish between the Browser version (Windy.com) and the APP version... they're quite different. Review the videos that he has posted on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeFoK1yKOTUBgfP_rTBoVvw/videos
Also note that there may be TWO Windy Apps... the one with the red logo is the one you want.
CJ Rader Pre-takeoff checklist

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I run the gamut of WX apps when checking the weather for a flight. I've got Takeoff, MyRadar Pro, Weather Channel, Weather Live, Dark Sky.. And I check my local TV station's website just to round things out.
frfly172 Touchdown! Greaser!

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ron keating

IBM strikes again,take a good product and make it unusable.
AggieMike88 Touchdown! Greaser!

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The original "I don't know it all" of aviation.

As CT4ME said, you want the app with whose icon is a red background with two white U-shaped swooshes.
The aviation utility is not obvious, I'll give you that. So you might want to use a PC/Mac to view the site. Away from a tablet, the site is a bit easier to navigate and find the features.

To see the aviation related items, first go to the upper right and switch on the "More Layers"

Then turn on the layers that fit what you want to see. I like to see details about wind, cloud bases/tops, and more. And will switch layers on and off as needed.

Along the bottom is the timeline. What is cool here is that you can "time travel" forward and backward to see the changes in the forecast. So if you are planning something for Friday Noon departure, but arriving at your destination 4 hours later, you can see what both ends of the flight are forecasted.

The search box in the upper left is where you put in the city or airport you want the forecast for. If you want to save that location, click the star to save it as a favorite. Windy does recognize the 4 letter ICAO designations.

The resulting forecast information also includes the METEOGRAM for the site you searched. I really like the way Windy does this. Instead of a simple line chart with dots for the points in time, they use a graphic way to show the information, including where the clouds are For the example from KDTO, the clouds today are FL300. You can also slide forward in time to see what the forecast is then. So you can see that on Sunday, when the predicted rain arrives, cloud bases are predicted to be 700 & 800 feet.

The very bottom line is showing you the cloud bases, and it will also follow the standard color representations for VFR, MVFR, IFR, and LIFR.

I hoped this helped you, @wrbix, and others.

Bulldog573 and NoHeat like this.
wrbix Pattern Altitude

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wrbix Pattern Altitude

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A flight planning weather tool that I've used for years is "MAV/MOS":
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/forecast/graphics/MAV/