Need to cover your plants overnight? Trying to plan a backyard barbecue with a forecast that keeps changing? The guessing game is over. With powerful technology that provides an accurate forecast of your specific weather conditions, Tempest is the first app that knows your weather.
A Weather Station So Advanced, It’s Simple. A design with no moving parts, nearly zero maintenance and instant online weather and forecasting data. Install the Tempest home weather system in less than five minutes and it will do the rest!
Weather observations stream instantly from the solar-powered, wireless Tempest station through WeatherFlow’s data center and are used to help provide a better forecast for your exact location.
The Tempest System provides real-time weather observations wherever it’s placed. This unique weather data is shared with the National Weather Service, contributing to a more accurate general forecast and helping us all predict and prepare for hazardous weather.
Enable your thermostat to use the weather conditions outside your home to conserve heating and cooling use. Automate your sprinklers to operate based on rainfall. Get text alerts when lightning is approaching. Save time and money with a home that can optimize itself.
WeatherFlow is a highly experienced team of programmers, meteorologists, engineers and data scientists. We have been providing better weather forecasts and decision support for more than twenty years and our current team has grown to over forty, including seven PhD scientists. We’re renowned for designing and operating professional-grade weather networks and providing highly localized forecasting. Our products include software tools and consumer apps that deliver our unique data and forecasts. In recent years, we’ve refined our data analytics to benefit from personal systems within our data network and our first generation home weather station is selling on Amazon today.
No other home weather station comes close. With no moving parts and near-zero maintenance, simply install and instantly watch the data pour in.
Proprietary Sensor Hardware
Wind. The Tempest uses ultrasonic sound to measure wind speed & direction continuously capturing every gust and updating every three seconds.
Rain. The Tempest’s haptic rain sensor calculates the force of each falling raindrop, so you’ll know precisely when the rain began, rain intensity, rain duration and total accumulation.
Lightning. Tempest will alert you to lightning activity in your area and alerts you as storms get closer. It detects both cloud-to-ground and cloud-to-cloud strikes up to 25 miles (40km) away.
Temperature. Tempest measures air temperature, but also reports the “feels like” temperature that’s more relevant for human beings.
Humidity. By measuring relative humidity, Tempest reports dew point temperature, an indication of how muggy if feels.
Pressure. Both station pressure and sea-level pressure (corrected for your elevation) are reported by Tempest.
Sunlight. Tempest reports UV index, solar radiation, and total brightness.
Tempest Also Reports: Wind Chill, Heat Index, Dew Point Temperature, Wet Bulb Temperature, Delta T, Air Density, and more.
Fully Solar Powered. Tempest has integrated solar panels and a lifetime rechargeable battery. It takes less than a full day of sun to charge, and it’ll run for up to two weeks with no sun at all. Never change a battery again!
Totally Wireless. The Tempest kit includes a small WiFi Hub that sits anywhere inside your home within range of your WiFi signal). Thanks to an incredibly long-range connection to the Hub, you can place the Tempest station up to 1000 feet (300 m) away and never miss a bit.
Remote Option. Don’t have power or WiFi? Our remote/cellular option includes a special Hub that is solar powered and will connect to just about any mobile network in the world. It includes a prepaid data plan that allows regular upload for two years. The base data plan can be upgraded for more frequent updates for an additional fee.
Accurate measurements from your location, along with data from other Tempest Systems, flows to our data processing center. There we also collect ALL other relevant weather data, including measurements from satellites, aircraft, radars and other surface weather stations. Our process ultimately yields standardized data and a real-time analysis product. Not every measurement is of equal value (e.g. wind ‘shadows’ affect how wind data is utilized) but our big data analytics adjust accordingly, meaning every Tempest System can make a difference.
Our forecast system initializes with the ECMWF, the highly acclaimed European global forecast model and the best of NOAA’s forecast models. Over key areas, WeatherFlow’s operational forecast system (WF WRF) assimilates the most valuable observations into this powerful baseline to provide detailed regional forecasts. We then apply powerful machine learning techniques (WF AI) to post-process the model output, providing a more accurate regional forecast than can be produced by models alone. To personalize your forecast we use additional AI based on data from your Tempest. The result is a more precise hyper-local forecast, guaranteed.
What makes this your new favorite weather app? Data from your backyard and a guaranteed better forecast.
Tempest data, along with all our real-time useful data, is part of data sets which are shared with the National Weather Service (NWS-NOAA), supporting their mission of predicting dangerous weather and warning the public of potential risks. NOAA has licensed data from WeatherFlow’s industrial grade weather stations for many years and will now be able to utilize additional data from the Tempest System. We help contribute to NOAA and other public agencies so they’re better equipped to fulfill their role in protecting life and property.
In addition to improving overall weather forecasting, WeatherFlow data aids decision-makers in key roles. For example, weather marks the single biggest impact on demand for electrical energy and has a profound effect on the amount of energy produced by renewable assets like wind and solar. Matching demand with supply in a timely manner is critical to the efficient use of energy resources.
At WeatherFlow, we understand the benefit of more data measurements to help us prepare for severe weather and to simply better view and document how weather patterns are shifting. Now we can take action. WeatherFlow, with the Tempest System, is addressing this need like no other weather company in the world.
Get a Data Dividend
For sharing your Tempest data we’ll send you an annual dividend check. Just install it, take some photos and keep the data coming. In 2020 and 2021 we’ll send at least $15 per year. *Future year dividend depends on WeatherFlow revenues.
Support the WeatherMatch Program
Contributions to the WeatherMatch Fund go directly to our university partners who are working to deploy weather systems in data sparse regions of the world such as Africa and South America. WeatherFlow also provides equipment at less than our total cost.
The Tempest System is built to work with most popular smart home platforms.
Tempest data can be accessed remotely as well as on your local network (even when the internet connection is down), which means your smart home system doesn’t have to rely on your Internet connection. Tempest is supported by a growing list of third-party platforms that can take advantage of this feature.
Here are just some of the ways to use weather observation and forecast data from the Tempest System with your Smart Home:
In addition to direct integration with your smart home systems, there’s also a growing list of devices and software that let you do all sorts of things with the data from your Tempest System.
A Flexible API
Integration with your Smart Home is simple but even more complex integration is possible with our rich set of developer tools. The WeatherFlow Tempest System exposes a collection of self-service APIs and documentation that make it easy for developers to build apps and integrations that access data on behalf of a Tempest station owner. With both remote access (via REST & Web Socket) and local access (via Bluetooth Low Energy, UDP Broadcast).
Work on the current Tempest System hardware began over a year ago, but the System has been in development for much longer. Leveraging 20+ years of meteorological data science at WeatherFlow and incorporating everything we’ve learned from more than 5,000 first-generation home weather stations in the field, the Tempest is well on its way to mass production. There have been multiple prototypes, tooling was completed this Summer and we’re on our third set of production samples. There are dozens of Tempest units being field-tested right now and we are placing an additional 200 units in the field as this Kickstarter campaign begins. Full production will start in December and our goal is to deliver to all Kickstarter backers by March, 2020.
While there are always challenges in producing a new product, we have already moved past the more difficult tests and we are confident in our ability to bring a reliable Tempest System into full production shortly. Our team has twenty years experience with apps, forecast modeling systems and reliable weather stations.
We are using the same set of well-known suppliers that we have used to produce our consumer line of weather devices over the last five years. We are lucky enough to work with like-minded suppliers and sub-assembly manufacturers who provide us with first class work and service.
We are delivering data to more than 5000 owners of the first generation WeatherFlow weather station and the architecture was designed to scale several orders of magnitude. In addition, we have been providing weather forecasts for specific points of interest and guaranteeing they will be more accurate than any other available service for many years. Scaling this enterprise to hundreds of thousands of devices will be one of the most rewarding challenges to overcome.
With a team of forty, WeatherFlow is not a large company, but we are well established. We would like to think that we represent the perfect size for a Kickstarter project. We are a group of hard working people who will be here many years from now to stand behind your Tempest.
Visit our Environmental Resources Center to learn how Kickstarter encourages sustainable practices.
Our weather device enclosures are made from a marine-grade plastic formula that is bromine-free, chlorine-free and RoHS compliant. It is designed to survive for years exposed to the harshest weather. Inside, the printed circuit boards are hermetically sealed with a low-temperature overmold that protects them from water intrusion and other corrosion-causing agents. Finally, we use a Lithium-Titanate (LTO) rechargeable battery that is guaranteed for the life of the product. Unlike other Lithium-Ion batteries, the LTO battery provides exceptional endurance (long life) and stability (safety) than others. The result is a product designed to last at least 10 years – virtually unheard-of for outdoor consumer electronics.
We have already implemented several policies to reduce our waste, such as refurbishing units for internal use (QA and R&D) and reusing packaging materials received from our supplier and customer returns for packaging of new orders. We are currently working on a program to recycle units that cannot be refurbished and will also be recycling the cardboard that cannot be reused.
Next step is working with our suppliers to source packaging materials produced from recycled material.
We are working to produce all of our packaging from recycled and/or recyclable material. Our goal is for our customers to be able to reuse or compost their packaging so that none of it goes into the landfill. Examples include recycled outer cardboard cartons and inner packaging made from compostable pulp-paper or water-soluble cornstarch.
We work in partnership with our contract manufacturer in Shenzhen to identify and undertake sustainable practices in all areas of the manufacturing process. The city of Shenzhen itself is a surprising model of environmental initiatives. Most of the city’s taxis and all 16000+ city buses are electric, and gasoline-powered motorcycles and scooters are banned from the city streets. As a result, the city is a mecca for electric vehicles, and they have reduced their air pollution by 50% in just 10 years. With incentives for factories to use renewable energy and “go green”, there is a real culture of sustainability there.
We are in the process of implementing changes in our planning process which will allow our supplier to ship our procured items via sea transport versus air freight. We will also be examining options for centralized DCs to consolidate shipments. In addition, due to moving to a new, larger location, we will be able to procure larger quantities of packaging materials per order, which should reduce the number of trips for this supplier. We have already right-sized our boxes, both to our end consumer and Amazon DCs, which has enabled us to use minimal packing filler and limit our transport costs.
A driving force behind WeatherFlow and the Tempest system is sustaining the planet and helping to protect the lives of everyone on it. We are passionate about this mission. That said, we are focused on what we know best, which is weather. We are experts and leaders in the areas of weather data and weather prediction. We are aware of changes around the frequency of severe storms and droughts and other weather phenomenon. We are far from experts when it comes to things like carbon emissions and any causal effects on climate change. As a company we aim to leverage our expertise in weather data measurement, processing and forecasting for the greater good of all. Here’s how:
1) We need more weather observation data, particularly in data scarce areas across the world. Granular observation data drives better real-time situational awareness and it is the key to a better short-term high resolution forecast which helps save energy at an individual location and on a broad regional scale.
2) National meteorological agencies require far more local data to produce the best life saving information, especially in underserved and underprivileged areas. WeatherFlow freely contributes data to national meteorological agencies across the globe to assist them in their mission to protect life and property.
3) Each Tempest owner has the option to share their data for purposes beyond the needs of any one individual. WeatherFlow provides a “Data Dividend” to anyone who keeps their system up and running.
4) Through our charitable fund, WeatherMatch, we are helping to fund the deployment of weather stations in critical data scarce regions around the globe. We are trying to help the planet by both contributing and encouraging to charitable endeavors. Nonetheless we expect to have the biggest impact by providing an easy to use valuable service at a reasonable price point.
WeatherFlow is also very committed to treating employees well and empowering them. We have offices just a few miles from both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and many of us spend a lot of time outdoors.