Sunday Salute: AccuWeather's 50th Birthday
AccuWeather celebrated its 50th birthday Thursday.
Photo of founder Dr. Joel Myers teaching meteorology at Penn State |
Thursday was the celebration of the 50th
anniversary of AccuWeather. Mother
Nature got in on the festivities with lightning and thunder two hours before
the start of the event. For many companies, the event would have been moved
indoors.Not AccuWeather: Our excellent forecasters said the rain
would be over and temperatures mild at 5pm – and they were right on the money.
Hundreds of guests flowed into the front entryway of
AccuWeather’s World Headquarters for the occasion enjoying the food and drink.
Our CEO, Barry Myers kicked off the addresses and introduced
a number of political dignitaries that included the #2 Republican in the U.S.
House of Representatives, Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California.
All of them
noted AccuWeather’s lifesaving work and Joel’s creation of 400 jobs and their benefit
to Pennsylvania, Kansas, and New York City. Later this year, AccuWeather will
open an office in Beijing.
Our COO, Evan Myers, discussed some of the challenges in
managing a 24/7/365 operation with truly a worldwide audience. More than one billion people each day receive
information from AccuWeather in 48 languages. I can add that, during Hurricane
Sandy, the computer systems of both the National Weather Service and The
Weather Channel slowed to a crawl at times. AccuWeather’s, under Evan’s
leadership, had no such problems.
Dr. Myers came to the platform to thank all of the people
who helped him build AccuWeather into the powerhouse that it is today. He
discussed the thousands of lives we have saved and the literally billions in
adverted economic loss due to the extremes of weather. We are the only
non-governmental source of weather information legally operating in China. Our
mobile app is the #1 mobile app for weather in the world. Our company continues
to make big investments in developing new products and further improving the
range and accuracy of our forecasts.
I joined AccuWeather six years ago when I sold the company I
had founded, 25 years before, WeatherData, Inc., to AccuWeather. It has been a
wonderful experience, I have made many new friends and have learned many new
things.
To all of my colleagues at AccuWeather, here are my best wishes for
another great 50 years!
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