Human beings may or may not have a lot in their arsenal, but what they surely have is a willingness to grow on a consistent basis. This progressive streak, on our part, has brought the world some huge milestones, with technology emerging as quite a major member of stated group. The reason why we hold technology in such a high regard is, by and large, predicated upon its skill-set, which ushered us towards a reality that nobody could have ever imagined otherwise. Nevertheless, if we look beyond the surface for one hot second, it will become abundantly clear how the whole runner was also very much inspired from the way we applied those skills across a real world environment. The latter component, in fact, did a lot to give the creation a spectrum-wide presence, and as a result, initiated a full-blown tech revolution. Of course, the next thing this revolution did was to scale up the human experience through some outright unique avenues, but even after achieving a feat so notable, technology will somehow continue to bring forth the right goods. The same has turned more and more evident in recent times, and assuming one newly-unveiled app experience ends up with the desired impact, it will only put that trend on a higher pedestal moving forward.
Weather Channel, the flagship consumer brand of The Weather Company, has officially announced the launch of a new app experience, which transcends traditional forecast to deliver at your disposal extensive information regarding how the weather impacts your daily life, activities, and physical and emotional well-being. Talk about the stated new experience on a slightly deeper level, we begin from the information you can expect regarding the weather’s potential impact on your general well-being. This information will cover content, forecasts, and tips tailored to several health conditions that can be impacted by weather. At launch, the app will offer sections for skin health, breathing, allergies, and cold & flu to help people prepare and mitigate their symptoms in a timely manner. However, plans to introduce similar sections for headaches, hydration & heat illness, and pet health, are already in place, and many other conditions will also join the pack at some point down the line. Next up, we must get into Weather Channel’s pledge of educating you on the air quality. Bringing to the fore a dedicated air quality forecast, the app will also offer a “Breathing Index.” The purpose of this index is to dispatch a more comprehensive insight into how breathing may be affected based on air quality, pollen, smoke, heat, humidity and more. Having referred to insights, Weather Channel’s app doubles down on that bit by leveraging AI-derived weather explainers. These weather explainers will be available at the top of the app to notify users in the context of possible weather-related risks. The stated feature can be used to share details like “cold temperatures will result in the risk of frozen pipes tonight,” “conditions for breathing are poor today, partly due to high pollen levels,” or “thunderstorms possible after 7pm.” Almost like an extension, Weather Channel has also introduced dual tabs to help you access better insights on the weather of that particular day, alongside the weather you can expect over the course of next 15 days. Interestingly enough, in an event of severe healthcare anomalies, such as winter storms, a tornado outbreak, or hurricanes, there will appear a third dynamic tab to keep you informed at all times.
However, Weather Channel’s new app experience isn’t just meant to be useful during a crisis. Instead, assuming the weather itself is fine; the app will make a point to provide uplifting content such as pet pictures or stories of people helping people, to generate positivity among users. Furthermore, the experience in question should go a long distance when the agenda is to make better plans for various activities. This is achieved using algorithms that factor in how various weather conditions affect specific interests. Based on the analysis, the app’s new Activities’ feature helps you plan things like hiking, camping, golf, tennis, running/walking, gardening, and more. If this isn’t what you are interested in, the good news is that Weather Channel will be introducing more activities over the course of next 12 months. Complimenting the same is the access to a pair of features called “Sun” and “Moon” that can come in handy to maximize your daylight hours; learn about stargazing and celestial events; plan for high tides and more. The stated pair of features are joined by an option to effectively customize the whole experience. By customization, we are shedding light on a fact that user can register and select what specific weather conditions are important to them (temperature, wind, humidity, precipitation, etc.). They will enjoy a similar choice in respect to their topics of interest (health and well-being; travel; climate and environment; pets; etc.). Other than that, the app will also study your behavior to fine-tune itself on an ongoing basis.
“Our mission has always been to help keep people safe and help them lead better lives. In our forty-year history, weather has never been more impactful and therefore never more important to consumers and businesses,” said Sheri Bachstein, CEO of The Weather Company. “Our transformed app will set a new standard for what people can and should expect from their weather provider, whether it is getting ahead of a storm, planning a trip, understanding how air quality could affect your health, or simply deciding when to go for a hike. The work by our combined team of meteorologists, product leaders and engineers truly focuses on the needs of our hundreds of millions of monthly users around the globe.”
As a part of its power-packed effort, Weather Channel is looking to offer an advanced AR technology angle to the company’s premium app subscribers. Under the touted arrangement, users will have a chance of visiting virtual environments and engaging in immersive, interactive weather-related experiences with augmented reality (AR). Right in that mix, there is one 3D view function which will let you visualize how conditions like UV, pollen, or inclement weather can affect your current location’s environment. Going back to app’s lowdown on the way weather can impact health, Weather Channel has partnered with trusted brands like Healthline for the purpose of providing expanded and relevant healthcare content. The final piece of highlight is the app’s newly-conceived commercial facet, where brands can tap into a portfolio of ad products that are underpinned by weather data, and therefore, can fluctuate with the changing conditions. This should enable stated businesses in their pursuit of building a more focused experience for ad-supported users.
All these offerings will, of course, thrive alongside Weather Channel’s existing capabilities that combine 100 forecast models before applying a proprietary mix of AI and human expertise to create the freshest and best possible forecast for any time and any location.
Operating out of Atlanta, Georgia, Weather Channel has risen up the ranks enough to become, as per data.ai intelligence, the world’s most downloaded weather app. This scale is further mirrored in the company’s stature as the largest provider of weather forecasts worldwide (web and app) for 2022, based on the average of total monthly unique visitors. Weather Channel’s excellence in what it does can also be understood once you look at multiple surveys conducted among a nationally representative sample of 799 to 8,434 US adults, surveys which ranked the company as #9 most trusted brand in the US.
