Take Nascar races, which are halted in the event of rain. The possible applications are nearly endless. The 29-year-old firm in Huntsville, Alabama, which manufactures $1 million Doppler radar units, has been beefing up its custom forecasting business. “Every time we turn around, a different market cracks open,” says Glen Denny, head of enterprise solutions at Baron Services. A 2017 report from the National Weather Service included a prediction that the sector could quintuple in size.

Recent numbers are hard to come by, but a 2013 article from the Wharton School estimated that overall revenues for climate and weather companies were about $3 billion and that, in aggregate, the industry was worth some $6 billion. They are fighting over a big and growing pie. In aggregate, they have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, who think the incumbents look vulnerable to creative new business models.

But now a perfect storm of macro-trends-ever cheaper processing power, cloud computing, vastly improved AI and a proliferation of low-cost sensors-has opened up the field to a fresh crop of ambitious startups.

Accuweather not working 2019