WeatherTrends360 helps consumers and companies predict the weather

Don’t call it the Farmer’s Almanac 2.0.
That historic publication, founded in 1818 in New Jersey, seems to have met its match. Bethlehem-based WeatherTrends360, a service provider and, now, consumer product offering, is doing something similar: trying to predict the next year’s weather.
Unlike the Almanac, which relies on predictions around the solar cycle, WeatherTrends360 is using complex algorithms based on historical weather data. And the company is helping large companies plan business strategies by understanding what they weather will be like during important sales cycles.
The company claims that it can predict weather with 80 percent accuracy.
“[Companies] need to know how much to buy, where to put it, when to promote it, how to advertise it,” says Co-Founder Bill Kirk [no relation to the author].
Companies like Wal-Mart, one of its first customers, Coca Cola and 150 other major customers are using the service to understand just how cold the winter might be, or when the first summer heat wave will hit. That information can help sell jackets or air conditioners.
And now, with the introduction of an iPhone app, the company is hoping to tune consumers into predictive weather patterns to help plan vacations, weddings and more.
“Who hasn’t planned a vacation, a wedding and not checked the weather,” Kirk asks. “We can almost guarantee 8 out of 10 times that we can nail that week for you,” he says.
What else does the data tell us?
“Right now, we’re seeing [weather patterns] similar to the 70s. The sun and oceans are in a similar phase,” Kirk says. That kind of data is matched with statistics around climate cycles and historic meteorology data collected from 66 governments, universities and other institutions from around the globe.
The technology started 22 years ago, says Kirk, when he was enlisted in the Air Force and helping it make flying operations safer by understanding the weather.
And after founding the company in 2002, signing Wal-Mart up for the service opened the flood gates, Kirk says, to other companies. Now, with its iPhone offering, the company is excited to connect with consumers who may have never heard of long-range weather forecasting.
Previously located in Plymouth Meeting through 2006, the company is made up of meteorologists, climatologists and statisticians. It’s a small staff, the number of which it wouldn’t disclose, but one that is reliant on computer technology rather than workforce.
It’s a venture capital-backed private company, having raised $6.5 million in a Series A round of fundraising — from investors like Philadelphia’s Trestle Ventures and Kodiak Venture Partneres and others — to expand globally through 2009 that it has since bought back. The company reached profitability in 2008, Kirk says.
“Every phase of our lives is impacted by weather,” Kirk says. “It’s all about putting the power of future weather in the palm of your hands.”