The story of WeatherOptics began over a decade ago. Company founder Scott Pecoriello grew up in Westport, Connecticut.
Having had a fascination for weather since he was 5--he can’t remember a time when he wasn’t interested in meteorology. In high school, Pecoriello decided to pursue his interest further by creating a blog. The blog, called Wild About Weather, forecasted future storms that would impact the region. This provided an opportunity to teach himself how to use complex computer forecasting models. After moving the blog to Facebook and creating specialized unique graphics that gave people a clearer understanding of his oft-complex predictions, things began to take off. Wild About Weather went from 12 followers to 20,000 in less than two years, all while Pecoriello was in high school. Inspired by the relative success, Pecoriello created an app for public high schools in Connecticut.
The app, Called Know Snow, was designed to accurately predict the chances of school districts closing due to snow. Within a year, the app had an 84% accuracy and was downloaded by thousands of people in Fairfield County. It wasn’t until the end of high school, though, that Wild about Weather rebranded and relaunched as WeatherOptics with one ambitious goal: disrupting the monotony of the weather industry.
The team recognizes young and creative developers, data scientists, and meteorologists as the key to success. With an app, a new fully refurbished website, clients, and a following of more than 40,000, WeatherOptics is now in a position to disrupt the industry as Pecoriello had planned. Data driven weather analytics has become the calling card for the company.
Today, Pecoriello resides back in Syracuse, New York after taking the year off from Syracuse University to work full time on WeatherOptics. He and his team were recently accepted into The Tech Garden Business Accelerator, where they have access to mentors, resources, and funding to continue to grow their business. The team is now up to 18 people and they hold 10 clients ranging from major emergency management agencies to smaller public school districts. They are now mastering machine learning and artificial intelligence; this will allow them to show companies how specific weather will impact their industry and how they can lessen the burden of storms.
Two new products will be launched in the coming months, which Pecoriello hopes will turn them from a smaller business into a major competitor in the weather industry. From products such as granular historical weather data pulled from high resolution computer models, to weather data dashboards that allow school districts to know whether or not they should cancel classes due to weather; the team is fully prepared to disrupt the weather industry. By 2020, the company expects to have several hundred clients as they shift further into big data. The future is certainly looking bright for WeatherOptics.