USA Today's printed weather page was groundbreaking in its day -- and as far as print goes, it's still state of the art. But frankly, what can be done with weather content online far surpasses what even the most ambitious meteorologist-editor-designer team can devise for the printed page.
Perhaps that's why weather tends to be one of the most popular categories of online content at many news websites. The reasons for online's superiority as a delivery vehicle for weather news and information are two-fold:
- Unlimited space online vs. tight restrictions for print weather pages -- allowing fine-grain personalization of weather content online.
- Online offers interactive and multimedia possibilities that go far beyond the limited static images and text options of print.
Here's a prime example of weather presentation that could not be duplicated in print. Newspaper sites like the Star Tribune's in Minneapolis offer "My-Cast," a personalized weather service developed by a local meteorologist and his company, Digital Cyclone.
What makes My-Cast special is its ability to pare weather data down to the neighborhood level. One My-Cast feature lets the website user type in a home address, then receive a personalized weather forecast, neighborhood-specific heavy-weather alerts, and maps with the user-defined address at the center. (Users can even set up multiple addresses.) The service uses weather data that is specific down to an area of about 4 miles square -- smaller than the typical ZIP (postal) code.
What's great about such a system, of course, is the personalization. It takes into account the existence of "micro-climates" within a geographic area -- taking advantage of available weather data that supports such micro analysis. While a metro newspaper's weather page is restricted by space to covering broad areas with a single forecast, Web weather can tailor content to the individual neighborhood.
Digital Cyclone is also working with Dallas-based Belo, which owns newspapers and TV stations. Belo Interactive vice president John Granatino says that weather is "by far and away the No. 1 draw" for several Belo websites. Particularly popular are animated Doppler radar features, which draw "millions of page-views" in certain weather-heavy months. (Here's an example of animated Doppler at Belo's Dallas WFAA television website. Registration is required.)
What TV does best
Television stations traditionally have been stronger on the weather front than newspapers. Ergo, the Web becomes a great medium to combine the strengths of print and TV -- and add the multimedia capabilities available online.
Such is the case at AZCentral.com, the website of the Arizona Republic and KPNX-TV, both owned by Gannett. Most of the site's Phoenix weather content comes from KPNX, which supplies a "current conditions" chart, updated hourly, and still and animated radar images.
AZCentral.com's Mike Coleman reports that the site's weather content typically accounts for between 150,000 and 600,000 page-views a month -- "not an amazing amount, but not too bad for a city that's beyond predictable most of the year, with something like 330 days of sunshine annually."
The metro area is the recipient of summer monsoons, and the site sees significant traffic spikes during the hottest weather. The paper and television station collaborated in the last two years on a monsoon special report, and that content is kept on the Web as a year-round reference.
The site also has produced multimedia weather slide shows, showcasing the best photography from the Republic. And it has created more than a dozen weather "explainer videos" that were shot by a KPNX meteorologist, about Arizona dust storms, microbursts, and more.
Mother Nature: a powerful draw
Don't doubt the importance of weather content. People rely on it. Take, for example, the case of the newspaper sites of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. Vice president of new media John Zappe reports that between May 1 and Sept. 7 this year, weather was dropped from the sites for technical reasons. "The outcry was unbelievable," he says, with an estimated 500 e-mails complaining about weather's absence or suggesting that the site offer it.
Zappe was surprised at the reaction, since Southern California is "the land of two seasons: sunny and hot, and sunny and mild. ... We don't have hurricanes, tornadoes, and only very rarely will we get a thunderstorm, and then usually in the desert 150 miles or more away. Yet weather is the one content feature that gets the most response."
If weather is hot (pardon the pun) in boring climates, imagine how important it is in areas that attract more exciting weather events. Indeed, historically, major weather events like hurricanes and major tornadoes have been among the top traffic generators of all time -- competing with the top non-weather stories in the Internet era in terms of attracting masses of online users.
The weather you care about is yours
Weather is most interesting to you if it's local, or if it's happening where you're going. The personalization I talked about earlier in this article is about serving a local audience in the best possible way. Another way, being tried at the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif., is to seek out the help of local "weather geeks" -- and not rely solely on the National Weather Service or commercial weather information services that serve a wider geographic base.
Press Democrat online content manager Catherine Thorpe says that in order to play up the local angle of her site's weather coverage, her site hooked up with a volunteer weather station operator in the Santa Rosa area and partnered to create a network of local weather stations, NorthBayWeather.com. Now the paper is recruiting other weather geeks in order to expand the local network. Five stations have been added to the list since June, and more are on the way, Thorpe says. "For really key locations, we are investing in the weather station equipment ourselves, and we are exploring having locations 'sponsored' by advertisers -- e.g., the 'Bodega Bay Web camera.' "
Such a go-local online weather strategy could make a lot of sense. In contrast, MaineToday.com, a regional news portal site operated by Blethen Maine Newspapers, has had relatively modest weather-content traffic, probably because it has relied on carrying weather highlights culled from its broadcast partners. Says MaineToday.com editor Zachary Gaulkin, "We suspect that our users are either going (directly to our broadcast partners' sites) or they are finding better information on national sites." That should change, as the site's broadcast partners are offering personalized online forecasts and e-mail alerts. Gaulkin also hopes to partner with a non-profit research organization that will supply timely and deep marine weather conditions. "This is an area in which we have an opportunity to outperform national weather sites and services such as Intellicast and Weather.com," he says.
