The Snow Day Calculator was started as a middle school side project in 2007 to predict the chance of school closings. This was a unique service where users could enter weather information (that they had to look up) and The Snow Day Calculator would output the likelihood of a snow day the next day.
In 2010, Snow Day Calculator launched automatic data retrieval from the National Weather Service making The Snow Day Calculator able to automatically predict for any US zip code. The number of unique users quickly climbed that year as everyone was eager to check for predictions in their area from The Snow Day Calculator. Today, over 5 million people (representing 100M+ yearly hits) come to the tool every year to get wickedly accurate info about if their school will be closed due to the coming weather. Users happily refresh their predictions multiple times a day (sometimes several times an hour) to get the latest prediction using the latest weather information.
Snow day predictions use the timing and strength of a snowstorm, wind, temperature, ice forecasts, and historical information about a user’s location and school. Predictions are wickedly accurate (100% accurate in many locations) and are trusted by millions of users all across the country. The Snow Day Calculator consistently receives high praise from users who trust the science behind the predictions. As the Snow Day Calculator learns more about each school and region from users reporting what actually happened, the predictions get more and more accurate.
In 2011, Snow Day Calculator released iOS and Android Apps allowing users to check their predictions on the go. Several news outlets wrote about the Snow Day Calculator that year as well, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, the Huffington Post, Boston NPR (WBUR), FOX, etc. The Snow Day Calculator continues to get yearly press from both National and local news sources that routinely reference The Snow Day Calculator predictions in their articles about upcoming snow storms.
The Snow Day Calculator also offers text message notifications to notify users of their snow day chance further in advance. Over 100K users have signed up for these texts and 300K+ people have an account that is part of a school district community. The Snow Day Calculator also offers community tools for school administrators to manage school closings and make announcements to their district. Additionally, many local businesses have placed local advertisements on The Snow Day Calculator website in order to promote their small businesses to their local community.
Despite being more than a decade old, the Snow Day Calculator is still an incredibly active company and project. The huge user following creates an incredibly engaged community of snow day and weather enthusiasts who are excited by checking their predictions on the Snow Day Calculator – their most trusted source to determine if they will have school tomorrow.
