Latest WeatherBug Press and Announcements | WeatherBug

WeatherBug’s latest news, featured articles, and press announcements all in one place.

Latest WeatherBug Press and Announcements

We asked our users how they’re using the Spark Lightning feature to stay safe. The Cajun Navy responded.

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Video - Know Before™ Lightning Strikes

WeatherBug introduces New Snow Forecast right on time for winter. 

It's that time of the year again. Winter jackets are out, the temperatures are dropping, and we can't wait until the holiday season. Some states already had their first snow shower of the season and are getting ready for the wintry precipitation to come.  
 
According to the National Center for Environmental Information, an average of 17–18 million square miles of the world gets covered in snow each year, 98% of it in the Northern Hemisphere. From Florida to Vermont, 49 of the 50 American states see some snow throughout the year.  
 
As winter weather impacts a significant portion of the United States, WeatherBug launches a New Snow Forecast. The New Snow Forecast allows users to keep track of their community's snow coverage and make timely decisions based on weather data.  
 
WeatherBug users affected by snow now can see the Precip Type beforehand, expected snowfall by hour with the Precip Rate feature, track snow depth for the week ahead, and see cloud cover by hour.  
 
Need to shovel the sidewalk? Check the precipitation rate and type before going outside. Want to go on an adventure? Make sure to check how the snow can impact your commute and avoid areas with increased snow accumulation or find the perfect conditions to go snowshoeing. With the new forecast, users have the best data points to decide the ideal time for their winter chores or to enjoy outdoor activities. 
 
The Snow Forecast is an addition to WeatherBug's recent rollout of alerts that will notify users if snow is expected in the next 15 minutes or 24 hours. The Snow Forecast is located inside the Hourly Forecast in the WeatherBug app and website.

WeatherBug's New Snow Forecast tracks snow depth and cloud cover by the hour 

WeatherBug joins the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather-Ready Nation initiative to improve the nation’s safety and readiness against extreme weather.

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NEW YORK – June 24, 2019 – WeatherBug (a GroundTruth brand), a leading weather site and mobile app with over 20 million users, has been officially recognized by the NOAA as a Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador™. The Weather-Ready Nation initiative was launched in 2011 and aims to acknowledge the efforts of organizations that are working to improve the nation's readiness against extreme weather, water, and climate events. 
 
"WeatherBug shares NOAA’s vision of building a Weather-Ready Nation," said Louis Uccellini, Ph.D., director of NOAA's National Weather Service. "Working together we will provide useful and relevant information to schools, businesses, and individuals to help them become ready, responsive and resilient to extreme weather and water events." 
 
Education and safety have always been on WeatherBug's radar. The application has focused efforts in educating communities and making sure its users are safe and ready for severe weather since 1993. "We are proud to join the Weather-Ready Nation initiative. WeatherBug started as a school program, and our foundation is on educating our community about the weather and its potential hazards. As a Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador, we are reaching back to our roots," said Eddie Dingels, WeatherBug's General Manager. 
 
As a Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador, WeatherBug is working closely with NOAA to develop a new educational and safety campaign for schools. "With NOAA's support and WeatherBug's consumer experience, we have the ability to create rich educational campaigns to reach millions of people in the United States," completes Dingels. 
 
About WeatherBug 
Established in 1993, WeatherBug is a popular weather site and mobile app providing hyperlocal, live weather data and proactive alerting to consumer users. With over 20 million unique users per month, WeatherBug’s vision is to provide environmental intelligence for all aspects of people’s lives. The WeatherBug app is a top rated weather app –ranking #1 in the app stores. In 2016, WeatherBug was named best weather app by MediaPost’s Appy awards. WeatherBug is owned and operated by GroundTruth, the leading global location technology platform. Learn more: www.weatherbug.com 
 
About GroundTruth 
GroundTruth is the leading global technology platform driving in-store visits and sales by leveraging location as the primary source of intent. We believe in the power of place. Build your brand, increase sales and grow your business by building off what real people are doing in the real world, mapped using our proprietary Blueprints technology. Through its data foundation, GroundTruth sees 2 out 3 smartphone users in the U.S. and more than 30 billion physical visits annually across 21 countries globally. Learn more: www.groundtruth.com
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WeatherBug Joins NOAA to Improve the Nation’s Safety and Readiness Against Extreme Weather

AdExchanger Names WeatherBug Best Mobile App Monetization

At WeatherBug, we are always striving to deliver the best mobile in-app experience possible for both our users and advertisers. And every so often, people take notice of our commitment to excellence. 
 
Most recently, WeatherBug snatched The 2021 AdExchanger Awards for Excellence in Mobile App Monetization. The award recognizes our dedication to providing brands with digital marketing and advertising solutions that help marketers build their brands and drive real business growth.  
  
Our journey optimizing monetization goes back to early 2018 when WeatherBug started to migrate away from the waterfall bidding strategy toward a customized unified auction setup. The pioneer implementation of the in-app bidding reduced latency and improved CPMs for WeatherBug advertisers. The initiative also resulted in WeatherBug winning our first AdExchanger Award in 2019 for Best Use of Technology By a Publisher.  
  
Implementing the Unified auction setup and optimizing in-app revenue was the prelude to WeatherBug's path to winning the 2021 AdExchanger Award for Excellence in Mobile App Monetization. The new strategy improved ad delivery and reduced latency resulting in a 25% increase in monetization. 
 
Since WeatherBug launched more than 20 years ago, there have been many other awards. You can check out some of the awards WeatherBug won in the last 5 years:
<ul>
	<li>2021 - AdExchanger Award for Excellence in Mobile App Monetization</li>
	<li>2019 -AdExchanger Awards for Best Use of Technology By a Publisher</li>
	<li>2019 - Mediapost Appy Award for Best Weather App</li>
	<li>2018 - Runner up “Best Weather App” by Appy Awards</li>
</ul>

It's Award Season at WeatherBug: AdExchanger Names WeatherBug Best Mobile App Monetization

With record varying weather conditions forecasted across the country in the coming months, WeatherBug has launched three new weather alerts.

<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">Fall is well underway, and winter is right around the corner. Depending on where you live in the US, you might be facing thunderstorms, cold fronts or starting to get your first snow showers. Regardless of your location, you will be happy to know that WeatherBug has ways to keep you informed about changing climates, and inclement weather conditions that will be impacting your day. 
 
It is hard to pinpoint the wettest month in the USA since each region has its own weather conditions. However, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), between January and September 2021, Mississippi had its third-wettest year-to-date period while Louisiana ranked fourth-wettest on record*. Precipitation was also above average across portions of the Southwest, from the Gulf Coast to the Ohio Valley and into the Northeast.  
 
No Matter What Your Local Weather is...WeatherBug Has You Covered 
The NWS 2021 Winter Outlook identified La Nina climate conditions emerging for the second winter in a row. In the NWS 2021 Winter Outlook, wetter-than-average conditions and an increased probability of snowfall are anticipated across portions of the Northern U.S., primarily in the Pacific Northwest, northern Rockies and Great Lakes. 
 
With record varying weather conditions forecasted across the country in the coming months, WeatherBug has launched three new weather alerts. 
 
Here is what you need to know: 
Real-Time Precip Alerts. Notifies users about precipitation that will happen within 15 minutes so no more guessing if overcast skies will be turning into rain. 
Daily Precip Alerts. Keeps you informed about when precipitation will happen within the next 24 hours so you can plan your outdoor activities accordingly. 
Commuter Alerts. These alerts take the guesswork out of when you need to hit the road by letting you know how the weather will be impacting your commute. 
 
To find and activate these features, open WeatherBug, go to the top left side Menu and select Alerts. Just make sure to enable/disable your alerts to each saved location. 
 
The Commuter Alert is the evolution of our Commuter feature that optimizes the app's live cameras, local forecasts and road weather data to support users' weather base decisions before they leave for the day. The alert connects our users to our road weather forecast data, notifying them how the weather will interfere with the roads around their location. The Commuter alert is a feature exclusive to WeatherBug.  
 
With the addition of these new alerts, WeatherBug now offers users nine alert options to help tailor their WeatherBug app according to their lifestyle and daily needs: Trending News, Weather Alerts, Lightning, Real-Time Precip, Daily Precip, Severe Storm Risk, Commuter, Pollen, and Air Quality Alerts make the complete list.</div>

New Precipitation and Commuter Alerts Help Weatherbug Users Navigate Changes During the Fall and Winter Seasons

In this post, we share how WeatherBug reduced their extract, transform, and load (ETL) latency using Amazon Redshift Spectrum. 

<a href="https://www.weatherbug.com/" style="font-size: 12pt;" target="_blank">WeatherBug</a> is a brand owned by <a href="https://www.groundtruth.com/about/" style="font-size: 12pt;" target="_blank">GroundTruth</a>, based in New York City, that provides location-based advertising solutions to businesses. WeatherBug consists of a mobile app reporting live and forecast data on hyperlocal weather to consumer users. The WeatherBug Data Engineering team has built a modern analytics platform to serve multiple use cases, including weather forecasting and location-based advertising, that is completely built on AWS. They use an <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3" style="font-size: 12pt;" target="_blank">Amazon Simple Storage Service</a> (Amazon S3) data lake to store clickstream data and use <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/redshift" style="font-size: 12pt;" target="_blank">Amazon Redshift</a> as their cloud data warehouse platform.

In this post, we share how WeatherBug reduced their extract, transform, and load (ETL) latency using <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/c-getting-started-using-spectrum.html" target="_blank">Amazon Redshift Spectrum</a>. 
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Amazon Redshift Spectrum overview<o:p></o:p>

Amazon Redshift is the most widely used cloud data warehouse. It makes it fast, simple, and cost-effective to analyze all your data using standard SQL and your existing business intelligence (BI) tools. It allows you to run complex analytic queries against terabytes to petabytes of structured and semi-structured data, using sophisticated query optimization, columnar storage on high-performance storage, and massively parallel query execution.<o:p></o:p>

Redshift Spectrum allows you to query open format data directly in the S3 data lake without having to load the data or duplicate your infrastructure. With Redshift Spectrum, you can query open file formats such as Apache Parquet, ORC, JSON, Avro, and CSV. For more information, see <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/c-using-spectrum.html#c-spectrum-overview" target="_blank">Amazon Redshift Spectrum overview</a> and <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/amazon-redshift-spectrum-extends-data-warehousing-out-to-exabytes-no-loading-required/" target="_blank">Amazon Redshift Spectrum Extends Data Warehousing Out to Exabytes—No Loading Required</a>. 
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Redshift Spectrum runs on a massive compute fleet independent of your Amazon Redshift cluster. Redshift Spectrum pushes many compute-intensive tasks, such as predicate filtering and aggregation, down to the Redshift Spectrum layer. Therefore, Redshift Spectrum queries use much less of your cluster’s processing capacity than other queries. With Redshift Spectrum, you can efficiently query and retrieve structured and semi-structured data from files in Amazon S3 without having to load the data into Amazon Redshift tables. Redshift Spectrum queries employ massive parallelism to run very fast against large datasets. Much of the processing occurs in the Redshift Spectrum layer, and most of the data remains in Amazon S3. Multiple clusters can concurrently query the same dataset in Amazon S3 without the need to make copies of the data for each cluster.<o:p></o:p>

 
Previous solution<o:p></o:p>

To summarize performance metrics for internal BI needs, WeatherBug has to move a lot of data between their S3 data lake and Amazon Redshift cluster using complex ETL processings. They used Apache Airflow to orchestrate their pipeline during the ETL process and used Apache Hive for large-scale ETL jobs in order to offload the data from the Amazon Redshift cluster. The Apache Hive data warehouse software facilitates reading, writing, and managing large datasets residing in distributed storage using SQL. You can project this structure onto data already in storage. A command line tool and JDBC driver are provided to connect users to Hive.<o:p></o:p>

WeatherBug chose Hive as a solution because it was easy to use with their Python/Airflow pipeline and they were able to launch multiple jobs in parallel. This solution was working well for WeatherBug but it needed more engineering effort to build the ETL processes along with operational overheads on the current solution because it involved multiple technologies.

 

New Amazon Redshift Spectrum-based solution<o:p></o:p>

To optimize the current Hadoop-based solution to move data between their Amazon Redshift cluster and S3 buckets, the WeatherBug team considered Redshift Spectrum as an alternative solution. The following diagram shows their updated architecture.

WeatherBug created <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/r_CREATE_EXTERNAL_TABLE.html" target="_blank">Redshift Spectrum external tables</a> that pointed to the data stored in their S3 buckets. This helped them perform the data movement and transformations from Amazon Redshift to Amazon S3 using Insert into <external table> select from <Redshift table> and from Amazon S3 to Amazon Redshift using Insert into <Redshift table> select from <external table> along with the data transformations in the inline SQL queries.<o:p></o:p>

During the pilot implementation on a few sample tables with this current solution, WeatherBug found it very easy to learn how to use the Amazon Redshift Spectrum features, and not long after they had a proof of concept far superior to their existing Hadoop-based solution. They reduced the targeted pipeline’s runtime from 17 minutes to 30 seconds, a 3300% improvement, with the additional benefit of eliminating the cost and management of Hadoop cluster. They were excited to apply this approach to additional pipelines that support their Amazon Redshift clusters. This was a nice win for them to be able to improve processing times and reduce cost and overhead with low engineering effort. 
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In addition to these improvements, they replaced some of their jobs that use Apache Hive to query tables with Amazon Redshift Spectrum. 
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In their initial testing, WeatherBug is seeing costs for Amazon Redshift Spectrum of $0.14 per day instead of $16.12 per day on Hive for a selected sample job, which is a 115 times reduction in cost. 
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Conclusion<o:p></o:p>

When you have a data lake and cloud data warehouse built in Amazon S3 and Amazon Redshift, you may need frequent ETL jobs between the two systems for different use cases. Amazon Redshift Spectrum provides an easy-to-implement, cost-effective, and high-performance solution to interact between Amazon Redshift and Amazon S3 to query the Amazon S3 data from Amazon Redshift, join Amazon Redshift tables with S3 objects, and transform using simple SQL queries. Many Data Engineering use cases similar to the WeatherBug example discussed here can be optimized using Amazon Redshift Spectrum.<o:p></o:p>

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About the Authors<o:p></o:p>

Anton Morozov is a WeatherBug data engineer working on analytics pipelines. He considers AWS Redshift an essential technology to understanding data for business intelligence needs.<o:p></o:p>

James Phillips is a WeatherBug data engineer who uses many AWS technologies on a daily basis. Some of these include Amazon Redshift, Amazon EMR, and Amazon SageMaker.<o:p></o:p>

Avijit Goswami is a Principal Solutions Architect at AWS, helping his digital native and startup customers become tomorrow’s enterprises using AWS services. He is part of the analytics specialists field community in AWS and works closely with the WeatherBug Data Engineering team.<o:p></o:p>

Latest News and Announcements

Video - Know Before™ Lightning Strikes

WeatherBug's New Snow Forecast tracks snow depth and cloud cover by the hour

WeatherBug Joins NOAA to Improve the Nation’s Safety and Readiness Against Extreme Weather

It's Award Season at WeatherBug: AdExchanger Names WeatherBug Best Mobile App Monetization

New Precipitation and Commuter Alerts Help Weatherbug Users Navigate Changes During the Fall and Winter Seasons

WeatherBug Reduced ETL Latency to 30 Times Faster Using Amazon Redshift Spectrum