With roughly 150 million Americans in the crosshairs of a massive winter storm that will bring ice, snow, or both from New Mexico to Maine and 32 other states in between, all eyes are on the Weather Channel. The storm could drop nearly an inch of crippling ice in Nashville and 18 inches of snow in New York City, with many state officials warning of hazardous road conditions and dangerously low temperatures.
“It’s showtime,” Rohit Agarwal, the CEO of the site’s parent, the Weather Company, tells Fortune in a Friday morning interview. “These moments bring a lot of things to a head. We are delivering critical information to consumers, and we power weather insights for airlines, agriculture companies, and retailers. We’re tightly integrated into the fabric of everyone’s life.”
The Weather Channel has named the storm “Fern.” (The National Weather Service names hurricanes, but does not do so for winter storms.) Fern’s path of destruction is expected to be devastating, particularly in Texas and the South, where dangerous amounts of ice are likely to cut power for millions and destroy property.
On an average day, the Weather Channel web site and its sister sites including Weather Underground get about 70 million visits collectively. But in the days around a major weather event like Fern, traffic can surpass 100 million, the company said. (The Weather Channel television network is a separately-owned company that licenses the brand and data from The Weather Company.)
But while it might seem like a public utility, the Weather Channel is a business. And with consumers having access to more and more options for their weather information, including independent meteorologists with their own Substack or Patreon sites, the Weather Channel is under pressure to keep its audience growing. Still, Agarwal says it’s counterproductive to goose numbers with hype or scare-mongering about extreme weather as a ploy to entice people to visit the site frequently amid weather emergencies.
“It’s ultimately about building long-term credibility,” says Agarwal. “We are helping people plan and prepare, and in these moments, doing so without dramatizing.” (Of course there’s always the risk of whiffing—getting a forecast wrong—he concedes, calling that “an occupational hazard.”)
Indeed, credibility is key to helping the Weather Channel build its business. The 45-year-old weather forecast operation was bought in 2024 from IBM by private equity firm Francisco Partners. Agarwal, who was chief product and growth officer at CNN before becoming the Weather Company CEO in late 2024, sees opportunities for growth in deals with large companies—airlines that rely on extremely detailed meteorological information; retailers shifting their supply chain or delivery plans when their distribution centers are knocked out by a storm; or food producers knowing when to crop dust. The company has about 2,000 corporate clients.
Another potential source of significant growth in these unpredictable times: cultivating weather enthusiasts. Agarwal sees opportunities to convert people from casual users of the Weather Channel’s web site to subscribers, eager for much more detailed, ad-free weather information, forecasts, and historical data.
The Trump administration made large cuts to the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service, last year. But Agarwal says the Weather Channel’s forecasts remain accurate because they aren’t only based on NOAA numbers. The forecasting process includes recruiting everyday people to send in their weather observations and hyper-local data.
As for Fern’s arrival this weekend, Agarwal, who was born in Canada and raised in Philadelphia, says he loves a good (but non-destructive) snowstorm. And with the weather year-round getting more and more erratic and variable, he sees great opportunity for the Weather Channel.
“People need to know how to react to these conditions,” he says. “So that creates a lot of demand for our services.”
