Weather.com Reigned Over Floyd - Hurricane Floyd increases demand for Internet-based weather information - Brief Article

Brandweek, Sept 27, 1999 by Kipp Cheng

When Hurricane Floyd hit the east coast two weeks ago, the storm brought along not only a deluge of rain but also a huge increase in traffic to the Weather Channel's Web site at Weather.com. White Floyd came into New York City like a lion, it ultimately fizzled out and left like a lamb. Most New Yorkers took their workdays off early, thanks to Mayor Rudy Giuliani's overcautious recommendation . At IQ, however, we watched the tropical storm from the safety of our Times Square office tower, tracking Floyd's path online. Who says rainy days and Mondays are the worst? With the Internet, we can watch from afar. For more weather and news stats, turn to page 72.

                     Daily Page Views for Weather.com

DATE         VISITS
Sept. 6   2,756,190
Sept. 7   3,593,147
Sept. 8   4,497,734
Sept. 9   4,290,680
Sept. 10  3,853,617
Sept. 11  2,131,350
Sept. 12  3,501,538
Sept. 13 14,928,459
Sept. 14 23,481,534
Sept. 15 22,606,625
Sept. 16 15,321,291
Sept. 17  4,357,776
Sept. 18  1,953,943
Sept. 19  2,522,597
Sept. 20  6,394,321


Data provided by Atlanta-based Weather.com, the Weather Channel Web site.

Online News Forecast Calls for Traffic Spikes

For Atlanta-based Weather.com, the Web site of the Weather Channel, news of bad weather is good news for the site. Web users, both at work and at home, scrambled to get information about Hurricane Floyd as it made its way up the eastern seaboard, causing traffic to Weather.com to outpace that of all other online news outlets. In fact, Media Metrix reported that Weather.com was the top gainer for the week ending September 19, with page views increasing nearly 150 percent to just shy of 1 million unique visits. By comparison, when Hurricane Dennis was traveling through the Florida region the week ending September 5, traffic to news sites remained roughly steady, while Weather.com's traffic was less than half of what it was the week of Floyd.