About Us

Jeff Masters, when a PhD candidate in meteorology at the University of Michigan and working under the direction of Professor Perry Samson, wrote a menu-based telnet interface in 1991, which displayed real-time weather information around the world. By 1992, the two servers his system used were rattling off their desks as "um-weather" became the most popular service on the Internet.

Perry and Jeff, in 1993, recruited Jeff Ferguson and Alan Steremberg to help build a system to bring Internet weather into K-12 classrooms. Chris Schwerzler joined Alan in his work on the Mac gopher client, "Blue Skies," which won numerous awards for its interactive imagery and text information. In the interest of expanding "Blue Skies" to other platforms, Dave Brooks, author of the Windows "WS Gopher" client, developed "Blue Skies for Windows" in 1994. The growing Internet weather program was given the name "The Weather Underground", a tongue-in-cheek reference to the 1960's radical group that also originated at the University of Michigan.

During early 1995, Netscape's prime, Alan and Chris embarked upon the "Blue Skies for Java" project to replace the aging gopher client with a sleek web interface. "Blue Skies Java" was included in Sun Microsystems' first set of Java Success Stories and led to the development of a full fledged web weather service. At the same time, Michael McDonald, a web developer, was building a comprehensive database of weather related information and tropical weather links on the web, which he later integrated into the tropical storm section of the Weather Underground site.

Incorporating on the Web

In late spring of 1995, the Weather Underground, Inc. evolved as a separate commercial entity from the university. By fall, the official web site, www.wunderground.com, was released with daily forecasts and hourly conditions for 550 US cities. After announcing the new web site on the telnet service, traffic immediately soared, creating a substantial user base. During 1996 and 1997, Jeff, Alan, Chris, and Jeff transformed the site into a dynamic service where information was updated in real-time with several innovative new features. These included one of the first zip code searches, severe weather warnings and advisories, international conditions, marine weather, and detailed local forecasts. They also began developing custom weather sites for TV stations and Internet portals.

Site Expansion

The web site matured in 1998 with the addition of several foreign languages, leading the Weather Underground toward its current state as the most widely translated weather site in the world - over 35 languages. Media Metrix named the wunderground.com site as the #5 most used sites by kids. The company opened its San Francisco office, and hired a VP of Sales, Chuck Prewitt, to handle its online ad sales effort.

1999 brought huge revenue increases through the proprietary AS5000 ad-serving solution. New site features included historical weather conditions and astronomy, and the number of web servers tripled in order to sustain additional users and heavy storm traffic. Near the end of the year, the company added a NOAAPORT satellite dish to its data center in order to add real-time NEXRAD precipitation data and high-resolution satellite imagery.