Weather companies want to do their best so that consumers and businesses can have reliable forecasts – not just for the day but in advance of it. Accuracy matters to weather services such as the Weather Channel and AccuWeather and predictive analytics, along with Data Science, is allowing them to get more precise weather reports than ever before. We all like to discuss what is going on outside, and we want to know if enough snow is expected for good skiing on an upcoming vacation, whether it will be pouring on a special occasion, or if the expectation of heavy storms with high winds requires a business to activate disaster recovery plans. In fact, a multi-year study of forecast accuracy – Analysis of One- to Five-Day-Out Global Temperature, Probability of Precipitation and Wind Speed Forecasts – found that AccuWeather was the most accurate provider for wind and precipitation forecasts and was a co-leader in accuracy for temperature forecasts. For temperature forecasts, AccuWeather was the most accurate for high temperature forecasts, while The Weather Channel was the most accurate for low temperature forecasts.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and its subsidiary The Weather Company, which includes The Weather Channel digital properties, were determined to be "the overall most accurate provider globally" by ForecastWatch, a premier organization for evaluating the accuracy of weather forecasts. In its latest comprehensive study of forecast accuracy released today,ii Global and Regional Weather Forecast Accuracy Overview, 2017-2020, commissioned by IBM, ForecastWatch named IBM's The Weather Company as the weather forecast provider whose forecasts overall were the most accurate globally when aggregated across all geographic regions compared and time periods covered. Further, the data showed that the gap between The Weather Company (noted as The Weather Channel in the report) and the next best overall provider has increased every year of the study.iii "A forecast is most helpful when it comes from a recognized, trusted source, and the pursuit of accuracy is at the foundation of what we seek to provide to help customers, consumers and marketers to make important decisions every day," said Sheri Bachstein, CEO of The Weather Company and GM of IBM Watson Advertising. "The study is evidence of how IBM is helping advance the science of weather forecasting through continued innovations in AI, data and cloud computing."