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MountainWave Weather is Now 5 Years Old! New Things Are On the Horizon...

I'm going to try something new this year. It's a bit risky, it may fail completely and it may cause many MountainWave Weather fans to leave but it's something I want to try. I'm a huge hockey fan and I believe in Wayne Gretzky's comment, "you miss 100% shots of the shots you don't take." In all honesty, I started this page because it was an outlet and a way to do something I love. Forecasting, tracking and chasing weather is something I've loved to do since I was 6 years old. I can't think of anything else in my life I have a passion for the same way I do for weather.

I love what MountainWave Weather has become, how it's grown and what it's accomplished. I want to move it forward and grow it with some new things and some of the ideas I've had so far are:

  • A new specialized planning forecast released every Sunday night that outlines most of the work week (Monday - Thursday)
  • A new specialized planning forecast released every Thursday night that outlines the weekend (Thursday - Sunday)

The above would be updated every week and have a general daily forecast with conditions, high temperatures, low temperatures and discussion along with a "heads-up" of what to watch for. It's a great heads up if you have a trip planned, a soccer game or any other outdoor activities.

  • Detailed forecast dashboards for specific areas
  • Walk-troughs of forecasting tools I use and how to use them to make your own predictions (sort of a learn to forecast type thing)
  • A set number of personalized forecasts per month. Thinking of name the location and time you want to see and I'll build a customized forecast.
  • A bigger storm chasing presence with more content involving storm chases (not just in spring) videos, photos and accounts

An initial look at the levels I am looking at implementing...

These are all some new things I'd love to start trying out in 2020. Some I can program myself, some I may need help with and others require me to access data from paid services.

My thinking is all of these could be new features for subscribers to a MountainWave Weather premium community. I would have different tiers where some or all of these features would be provided for a monthly cost. In return for helping me pay for some of the new costs this site has incurred I would have these special features available with more detailed information and more constant updates.

Before You Grab the Pitchforks (or leave and never visit/read/follow MountainWave Weather again!)

Please understand that everything you've come to know and love with MountainWave Weather to this point will not change. I will not bury my weather posts, forecasts or anything else I've done up to this point. If you'd like to just be a viewer and keep getting the same information you have until now, you will notice no changes. Nothing provided up to this point will live behind a paywall and I won't take current features/functionality/content and begin to charge for it. That's not how I roll...

The additional features will be a thank you for helping me cover costs and grow in the future. I've tried testing some of the online ads for the past month on my site and don't believe it to be sustainable. Something about getting over 30k visits the site and getting paid $0.78 just doesn't seem worth the hassle, so those may be scaled back or dis-continued completely in the near future.

 

The Reality

MountainWave Weather is now 5 years old and it's reached the physical limit of what I can reasonably afford without likely getting a second job. I'm hoping that this could become that second "side-gig" that could help cover the costs and implement new features. The reality is that as this site has grown I've had to invest in bigger server infrastructure, (so that the site stays up) new weather software for forecasting and display and some other unexpected costs. I simply can't invest the time and the money without finding a way to cover costs (like I said a second job is possible but then I'd have to cut back on this site quite a bit.)

I am super happy so many people found MountainWave Weather over the past year or two and hope that it continues to grow, but something will have to give eventually... I'd rather not give up on this because it's something I absolutely enjoy doing!

Thank You!

Thank you all for your support, I'm hoping this goes over well but I can understand how it may not. I'm going to try it out anyways, if it fails I'll cut back and continue doing updates here and there but probably won't be able to grow it much beyond what it is. I'm going to try something out here and take risk, if it fails I'm no worse off but if it succeeds I will be making a little part of a dream come true!

Thank you again and if you have any comments/questions/concerns please e-mail me or message me personally. I would love any feedback (yes positive and negative)