Weatherzone, known before 9 August 2010 as The Weather Company and still trading under this name, is the main provider of value-added meteorological services in Australia. Their main business lines are services to energy, utilities and mining companies. They also provide services to ports, insurance and large retail corporations. They specialize in aggregating content from a large range of private and government funded organisations (e.g.

Bureau of Meteorology The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM or BoM) is an executive agency of the Australian Government responsible for providing weather services to Australia and surrounding areas. It was established in 1906 under the Meteorology Act, and brought together ...

, Environmental Protection Authority,

World Meteorological Organisation The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. The WMO originated from the Internat ...

Australian Broadcasting Corporation The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national broadcaster of Australia. It is principally funded by direct grants from the Australian Government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a publicly-own ...

etc.). Weatherzone is the major commercial weather company that provides meteorological services in Australia.

History

Weatherzone was founded in 1998 by former Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) meteorologist, Mark Hardy, providing graphics, scripts and weather briefings for television weather presentations. In 2008 in response to an increasing demand from industry for more accurate and more frequently updating weather forecasts, Weatherzone developed the Opticast forecast system. This system takes information from over a dozen computer models including variants of the in-house operated Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The Opticast algorithms are run every hour ensuring the forecasts are continually staying abreast of rapid and previously unforeseen meteorological changes. The accuracy of Opticast allowed weatherzone to make a successful foray into the lucrative energy and mining weather forecasting markets. Over subsequent years, many of Australia's major electricity companies commenced using weatherzone's Opticast forecasting products including AGL, Snowy Hydro, Origin and AEMO. On 25 June 2008

Fairfax Media Fairfax Media was a media company in Australia and New Zealand, with investments in newspaper, magazines, radio and digital properties. The company was founded by John Fairfax as John Fairfax and Sons, who purchased ''The Sydney Morning Herald' ...

acquired a 75% share in Weatherzone (then known as The Weather Company) with 25% still owned by the founder, Mark Hardy who retained the Managing Director role. On 9 August 2010 The organisation changed its name from ''The Weather Company'' to ''Weatherzone''. It still trades as ''The Weather Company Pty Ltd''. Weatherzone was part of Fairfax's Digital Ventures group of companies and in September 2013 Charles Solomon was appointed Managing Director. In 2015 Weatherzone expanded into Africa with an investment in South Africa based AfricaWeather. Weatherzone also operates the largest total lightning detection network in Australia. On 1 October 2019 Fairfax's 75% stake in Weatherzone was acquired by US-based DTN for an undisclosed sum.

Services

Weatherzone runs their own WRF computer model which is used to produce content for the subscription product, Weatherzone Pro (formerly Weatherzone Silver), and feeds into their Opticast forecasting model. It employs a team of meteorologists to offer a meteorological alternative to the

(BOM). Weatherzone also provides services for displaying weather on websites. Some large sites that use this include Elders, an Australian agricultural site, News Corp Australia (formerly News Limited) and

. Advanced forecasts and alerting products are also produced for the energy, mining and insurance industries. Weatherzone publishes its own weather site and smartphone apps which combines their own content with Bureau of Meteorology information and that from several global providers into a user friendly and customizable interface. Weatherzone sources surf data from Swellnet, Australia's most popular source of online surf reports, surf forecasts and live surfcam vision. It provides these weather services, for among others, The

, and world weather reports for

Bloomberg Television Bloomberg Television (on-air as Bloomberg) is an American-based pay television network focusing on business and capital market programming, owned by Bloomberg L.P. It is distributed globally, reaching over 310 million homes worldwide. It is hea ...

. Weatherzones Apple iOS app includes iPhone, iPad and WatchOS apps, enabling users to view 10-day forecasts, rain radar and BOM warnings at a glance. The iOS apps also include WeatherPulse, a daily video magazine. The app offers both a free ad funded version and a paid for subscription.

References

{{Subscription television channels in Australia Climate of Australia Meteorological companies Service companies of Australia Companies established in 1998