Whether or Knot LLC,
d/b/a
A trade name, trading name, or business name, is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is a "fictitious" business name. Registering the fictitious name w ...
AerisWeather, is a global weather RESTful API and tile mapping layer provider established by
Paul Douglas
Paul Howard Douglas (March 26, 1892 – September 24, 1976) was an American politician and Georgist economist. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a U.S. Senator from Illinois for eighteen years, from 1949 to 1967. During his Senat ...
, David Hubbard, Michael Vaughan, and Craig Mataczynski. It is based in
Eden Prairie, Minnesota. The company is owned by
Vaisala Group following an acquisition in late January of 2022.
History
Paul Douglas first had the idea for outsourced weather production in 1979 but shelved it due to the expected high cost, mostly for satellite feeds ($5 to $7 million a month). After being laid off from
WCCO-TV
WCCO-TV (channel 4) is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, broadcasting the CBS network to the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities area. It is owned-and-operated station, owned and operated by th ...
in 2008, Douglas started WeatherNation, as broadband's growing availability decreased the costs. Douglas was CEO and Todd Frostad, formerly of
Digital River
Digital River is a private company that provides global e-commerce, payments and marketing services. In 2013, Digital River processed more than $30 billion in online transactions. Digital River is headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota.
Compan ...
and a commercial real estate businessman, was president and co-owner. The company hired 5 other meteorologists.
One of the company's first clients was the St. Cloud Times, who signed on during the summer of 2009.
Another was
KARE, in the launch of its Weather Now subchannel.
In 2009, Media Logic, WeatherNation's parent company, purchased HAMWeather, an Atlanta-based company. By November 2009, the company had about two dozen clients, including some Spanish-language stations. WeatherNation also signed on
Independent News Network
News HUB (formerly known as Independent News Network) is a production company based in Little Rock, Arkansas, which syndicates "localized" news programs for broadcast television stations in the United States, that have budgets limiting their ...
which uses the company for five of its Spanish-language client stations.
On May 20, 2010, the company launched
The Weather Cast
The Weather Cast was a short-lived television channel seen exclusively on Dish Network. The channel was devoted solely to weather forecasting, weather forecasts from across the United States, and was a direct competitor to The Weather Channel (o ...
, a channel developed for
Dish Network with the intent to replace
The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel (TWC) is an American pay television channel owned by Weather Group, LLC, a subsidiary of Allen Media Group. The channel's headquarters are in Atlanta, Georgia. Launched on May 2, 1982, the channel broadcasts weather foreca ...
on the satellite provider. Dish, which had been negotiating with the channel on a new carriage agreement, had planned to drop The Weather Channel as a result of a
dispute over a planned increase in
retransmission consent
Retransmission consent is a provision of the 1992 United States Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act that requires cable operators and other multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to obtain permission from commer ...
payments and the provider's dissatisfaction with the channel's decreased reliance on weather forecasts in favor of
reality
Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, r ...
,
documentary and other entertainment programming.
Weather Cast existed for four days, ceasing operations on May 24, when The Weather Channel reached a multi-year agreement with Dish Network.
The company licensed its
WeatherNation
WeatherNation TV (branded on-air as simply WeatherNation) is an American terrestial television, broadcast, streaming media, digital streaming, cable television, cable, and satellite television, satellite television network owned by WeatherNatio ...
trademarks and brand to Performance One Media in 2010 and changed its name to Broadcast Weather. Broadcast Weather was also contracted to produce the WeatherNation programming.
With the license out of the WeatherNation trademarks, the company was split into four companies, Broadcast Weather LLC, HAMWeather LLC, Smart Energy LLC, and Singular Logic.
[
In June 2010, the company with ]Insight Communications
Time Warner Cable, Inc. (TWC) was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, operat ...
launched the CN2 cable channel to serve the state of Kentucky, providing the weather. By mid-August 2011, Broadcast Weather was providing weather video to Bay News, a San Francisco Bay area iPad-only news service.[
On August 1, 2016, Whether or Knot, LLC announced its acquisition of HAMWeather's assets. Via an announcement on the HAMWeather site, it was announced that AerisWeather was to become the ]trade name
A trade name, trading name, or business name, is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is a "fictitious" business name. Registering the fictitious name w ...
for the future developments in the entity's weather API and mapping products, which are currently taking the place under the umbrella of Whether or Knot LLC.[HAMWeather]
"HAMWeather homepage"
''HAMweather Sold to AerisWeather'', date The entity that formerly owned AerisWeather was renamed Praedictix. In early April 2020, AerisWeather refreshed PWSweather.com, a site that allows personal weather station users to collect and share data.
Current Operations under Whether or Knot, LLC
AerisWeather was acquired by Vaisala Group, a Finland-based corporation with global reach, on January 27, 2022. Under Vaisala, AerisWeather maintains its brand name and continues to sell its weather API, mapping layers, MapsGL layers, and weather webhooks to businesses and developers around the world. On September 28, 2022, Vaisala announced its new brand, Vaisala Xweather, under which the AerisWeather name is now housed. AerisWeather continues to sell its products through its own website, with Xweather's website
Xweather.com
serving as an intermediary between AerisWeather and its sister companies under the Xweather branch.
Products and Services
Services
*AerisWeather API, a global weather API oriented towards business and enterprise applications offering historical, current, and forecast conditions for nearly any location on Earth. A current subscription to the AerisWeather API includes access to all of AerisWeather's data endpoints, including (but not limited to) the air quality, alerts, conditions, forecasts, tropical cyclones, storm cells, fires, and lightning endpoints.
** Webhooks can be utilized to improve efficiency when monitoring for changes in conditions or alert status in defined locations or boundaries.
*AerisWeather Maps offers map layers for visualizing weather data in custom applications. A current subscription to AerisWeather Maps includes access to all of AerisWeather's standard mapping layers, including (but not limited to) base maps, overlays, masks, radar, satellite, alerts, storm threats, storm cells, severe, tropical, lightning, forecast, air quality, outlook, and ocean.
*AerisWeather Flex, an offering that provides full access to both AerisWeather API and AerisWeather Maps for one bundled price.
* AerisWeather MapsGL, a WebGL
WebGL (Short for Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelera ...
-based weather mapping option, released by AerisWeather in August of 2022. MapsGL layers use vector image files, providing faster loading times and allowing for smooth and seamless weather animations. A subscription to MapsGL provides access to all of AerisWeather's data layers.
*Lightning Add-On, an API and mapping add-on that provides users with access to premium lightning data and visuals from Vaisala's global lightning network.
*WeatherBlox, embeddable weather widgets powered by the AerisWeather API and Maps.
Former Units
*Broadcast Weather, LLC provides TV station weather reports
*Ham Weather LLC, development of graphics, data streams and mobile API’s
*Smart Energy LLC, wind forecasts for wind farms
*Singular Logic, patent or patent pending holder of user choice advertising[
]
References
External links
{{Television news in the United States
Weather television
Meteorological companies
Television news