Forecasts On Demand

location based services


Noticing a Warming Trend in Text Messaging, Weather Services Offer Pinpointed Alerts
By Kim HartWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, June 13, 2006; Page D01
As the first severe storm of hurricane season barrels toward Florida's Gulf Coast today, some weather forecasters are hoping residents look to their cellphones instead of the darkening skies.
WeatherBug, a weather information service based in Germantown, announced a new product yesterday that uses Global Positioning System tracking to pinpoint a subscriber's location and send targeted weather alerts to a cellphone, BlackBerry or other handheld device.
Current Conditions
The most popular types of sites for consumers logging on to the Web from their cellphones:
47% E-Mail
45% Weather
29% Sports
25% News/Politics
24% Maps/City Guides
SOURCE: Telephia Inc.
The new alert system is one of many similar services weather information providers are offering as a way to customize forecasts for wireless customers wanting up-to-the-minute reports on severe weather, especially in the wake of last year's disastrous hurricane season. New technology makes it easier than ever to deliver such news, and a growing number of text messages, video forecasts and mobile Web programs send live information to consumers' palms.
"Weather lends itself very well to the mobile environment because it has location sensitivity and time sensitivity," said Kanishka Agarwal, vice president of new products for Telephia Inc., a research company that measures mobile phone Internet usage. "It's instant gratification, and that's what cellphones provide."
Weather-related Web sites are the second most popular destination among customers logging on to the Internet via cellphones, behind e-mail sites, reaching about 45 percent of users who regularly access the mobile Web, according to Telephia's April report.
The most common weather alerts come in the form of text messages, which customers tweak according to their own forecast preferences. Messages tend to cost at least 30 cents per text, or $3 to $6 for a monthly subscription.
In a wireless world where 9.8 billion text messages were sent in December, up from 14 million in 2000, according to the CTIA wireless association, meteorological companies see money to be made.
"For private weather companies like WeatherBug, this is their tour de force," said Greg Romano, spokesman for the National Weather Service, which supplies severe weather alerts to such companies during storms. "In addition to providing official watches and warnings, the private side is able to expand into these markets when they can offer these services."
Cable television's Weather Channel reaches the greatest share of mobile customers and offers customized data by Zip code via video, text messages and other programs. The network started providing mobile forecasts in 1998, but the program's popularity has "taken off in the past year because the technology has evolved . . . and there's a greater desire among customers to know what's happening in the weather," said David Blumenthal, spokesman for the Weather Channel's interactive division.
Subscriptions to weather information downloads tend to spike during severe weather seasons, such as the hurricane season, which started June 1, he said. This year, the Weather Channel is partnering with BellSouth Corp. to send more detailed messages to residents in storm-prone areas of the Southeast.
Other providers are also beginning to send location-specific, customized messages to wireless users. AccuWeather Inc. sends daily, Zip-code-specific forecasts to more than 8 million wireless customers. It has a GPS-enabled program for hand-held computers but not yet for cellphones.
In April, InPhonic Inc. partnered with WeatherBug to provide weather alerts to subscribers, and last year, WeatherNews Inc. joined 4Info Inc. to send their own forecasts. Many local governments and television stations also have similar offerings.
High volumes of text messages during severe weather can clog wireless networks, said Doug Yule, AccuWeather's wireless services director. "But, under normal circumstances, messages can be received in a minute or two," he said.
Spotty wireless signals during bad weather are one reason text alerts have become so popular, said Jan Dutton, WeatherBug's director of weather services. Text messages require far less bandwidth than voice calls, so they can be delivered faster in inclement weather.
Smart Notification Weather Service, the alert system WeatherBug announced yesterday in partnership with New York-based Send Word Now, is geared toward large businesses, agencies and school districts that need to simultaneously disseminate emergency messages to large numbers of people. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the school district of Broward County, Fla., are the first to sign up for the service as a way to notify store managers and faculty of impending weather disasters.
GPS technology allows WeatherBug to send messages warning of lightning strikes, wind gusts and high heat indexes based on the precise location of a particular store or the field where a high school band is practicing, Dutton said. The company has thousands of automated, weather-sensing stations around the country.
But such exact information isn't always necessary, said Romano of the National Weather Service. And some users may find that frequent messages can rack up charges from their carrier.
"We have various avenues to provide watches and warnings," he said. "The important thing is people have a way of receiving information that works best with their situation."