The Freese-Notis Weather company, commonly known as Freese-Notis, is a

weather forecast Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the conditions of the atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia and formally since the 19th cent ...

ing corporation. Headquartered in Des Moines,

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to th ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, it has a global presence in the fields of meteorology, analytics, and related services, and also provides Internet Access DSL and

Web hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing we ...

services. The company strengths for

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

and energy markets now creates forecasts spanning industries such as media and web content found in the

and foreign countries.

Company history

Charlie Notis and Harvey Freese both were students at

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State became one of the ...

in 1973. The company originated on the Iowa State University campus in nearby Ames while they were post-grad students at Iowa State during the 1973 oil crisis. The partnership was formalized on May 1, 1973 with a

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

as its first piece of office equipment and acted as collateral for shares of stock. A friend of Harvey and Charlie suggest to name the enterprise "Freese-Notis Weather." During the first couple years of existence, some of the radio listeners during the summer months would get confused when the radio announcer would introduce the Freese-Notis forecast that some thought was a "freeze-notice" forecast. In 1995 Quote.com became one of the early users of content written by

meteorologist A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists in research, while t ...

s highlighting weather with commodity symbols for easy access by traders. Shortly after that, both sponsored and subscriber based web pages were added to ''Successful Farming'' magazine's site, through the portal for the agribusiness and producer audience. Doppler

weather radar Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar (WSR) and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type (rain, snow, hail etc.). Modern weather radars are mostly pulse- ...

imaging for the site called InterRADTrademark Applications and Registrations Retrieval
serial number 76155870 (InterRAD)], ''

United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alex ...

'', (2000-10-30). Retrieved 2002-09-17. provided a national, regional and local views across the contiguous states plus the District of Columbia but geared to the farmer. The service evolved to a second generation even more tuned to use with

web portals A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayi ...

after the year 2000 to include mobile applications and other kinds of weather map displays. In 1995, other web sites added sponsored content pieces and subscription services. The

Azurix Azurix Corp. is a water services company, headquartered in Houston, Texas. The company owned and operated facilities in North America (mainly Canada), Europe, and South America. In 2007, Azurix was awarded a $165 million claim against the govern ...

company added content from Freese-Notis containing weather information related to water consumption and use.

Irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has been devel ...

users of the

web site had a perspective on risk management with Freese-Notis weather providing a series of maps outlining the trends for their operations. Freese-Notis had also been the recipients of Christmas Baskets from Enron trading for appreciation of their weather forecasting services multiple times, even in 2001 making the final cut despite the troubles within that firm. The general model later switched to either advertising based or sponsor based types of web content.

References

{{Reflist Business services companies established in 1973 Meteorological companies 1973 establishments in Iowa