American weather predictors AccuWeather.com have acquired Montreal-based startup Sky Motion this morning, as per reports from Mashable.
The reason for the acquisition is to position the State College, PA-based AccuWeather to be able to offer hyperlocal, real-time weather data to mobile users. Sky Motion’s current app develops highly accurate, hyperlocal (down to the half square mile) and very-short-term weather forecasting technologies, which delivers that information to its mobile users every five minutes. Information logged includes wind, temperature and precipitation.
The app can be handy in everyday situations to figure out (*)whether(*) its going to rain in a given area, not just to see the percentage chance, but highly accurate information that one can rely on.
No dollar value was attached to the Mashable report and thus far BetaKit hasn’t been able to reach Sky Motion.
According to the report though, the combined forces of AccuWeather and Sky Motion will result in a new mobile app called “MinuteCast”. AccuWeather’s chief digital officer Steven R. Smith told Mashable that user data will play a central role in the new app.
“Generally, AccuWeather and users will contribute data points,” he told the site. “And going forward we definitely expect this to continue to be a valuable feature, that is, turning users into data points that help to inform and provide the most accurate forecast on a real-time basis.”
Sky Motion’s technology refreshes its data every 5 minutes and focuses on the next two hours to keep users informed of changes that will impact them directly. The startup also warns users that trying to predict the weather beyond that unfortunately results in more inaccurate data.
Nevertheless, the startups says “through algorithms invented by Sky Motion Research founder André Leblanc, SkyMotion tracks precipitation clouds in North America to predict where they are headed for the next 2 hours.”
“Our technology processes radar images pixel by pixel and cleans them up to remove false alarms caused by falling debris, airplanes and birds. To ensure accuracy this entire process is repeated every 5 minutes across 16 million zones in North America simultaneously.”