History
Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it was founded in 1995 as an offshoot of the University of Michigan's Internet weather database. The name is a reference to the 1960s militant radical student group the Weather Underground, which also originated at the University of Michigan.
Jeff Masters, then a PhD 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. By 1992, they claim that the two servers they used were the most popular service on the Internet. In 1993 they recruited Alan Steremberg and initiated a project to bring Internet weather into K-12 classrooms. WU's president, Alan Steremberg wrote "Blue Skies", a graphical Mac gopher client, for the project 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. evolved as 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; WU also provides weather reports for some newspapers (including the San Francisco Chronicle) and the Google search engine. Alan Steremberg, Weather Underground's president, also worked on the early development of Google's search engine with Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
In October 2008, Jeff Masters reported that the site was #2 in Internet Weather for 2008.
In February 2010, FullScreenWeather.com, a full screen weather web tool was launched with integrated mapping and mobile device use in mind.
On July 2, 2012, The Weather Channel announced that it would acquire Weather Underground, which will become operated under its subsidiary The Weather Channel Companies, LLC. The Weather Underground website will continue to operate as a separate entity from The Weather Channel's primary website weather.com and all existing staff will be retained. The Weather Channel also plans on using the site's San Francisco headquarters as a regional office.
Read more about this topic: Weather Underground (weather Service)
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