'Tis the Season for WeatherBug

An early winter storm that is dumping snow and snarling traffic throughout parts of the eastern United States is also giving a record boost to the WeatherBug information site, which reported Thursday that it has experienced a record number of page views and downloads over the past 24 hours.

WeatherBug, which is owned and operated by AWS Convergence Technologies, is the name of both the company's weather information Web site and its software application. The program sits on a user's Windows taskbar, providing local forecasts, live camera images, and weather advisories.

Over the past 24 hours, the company reported, the weather application has been downloaded over 81,000 times, doubling the number of download requests it receives on a typical day. Furthermore, the WeatherBug site had over 20 million page views Wednesday, as easterners rushed to prepare for the oncoming storm, according to Andy Jedynak, WeatherBug senior vice president and general manager.

Seasonal Hit

"WeatherBug is very popular, but this is a milestone for us," Jedynak said. "That people who have never used the product before came to us in such volume says to me that we have really hit the map." Predictably, the site tends to draw interest during extreme weather; it was among the most popular sites during the hot summer of 2001.

More than 16 million people have now downloaded WeatherBug's application, the company said. The service is powered by AWS's national network of 6000 weather stations, based mostly at schools. WeatherBug comes in both a free edition and a premium version, which is priced at $20 a year.

It's one of a number of weather information sites, including commercial services and sites that post resources from governmental agencies. Weather information--often fed by one of the dedicated weather sites--is often a feature of general-interest sites and portals, as well.

Snow Sightings

The ice-and-snow storm that has sent users scrambling to the Web for information and updates swept through the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma on Wednesday, causing hundreds of traffic accidents and huge flight delays. The storm is now moving north, through Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and is expected to dump anywhere from 4 to 10 inches of snow.

The Federal Aviation Administration reported an average 8-hour delay in flight arrivals for New York's La Guardia Airport on Thursday afternoon, nearly a 2-hour delay coming into Washington, and delays over 4 hours for flights arriving in Philadelphia.

But while East Coast residents can only hunker down and wait for the big chill to pass, the storm is not bad news for everyone. After all, WeatherBug is expecting another record spike in page views Thursday.