My Friday Brainstorm
For subscribers only. Thinking out loud before Monday's Weekly.
One of my favorite Amazon TV shows is Clarkson’s Farm, starring the eponymous — and at times controversial — Jeremy Clarkson. He and I are roughly the same age. He’s funnier and considerably wealthier. But I’m (way!) more fit — and I’d beat him in a foot race 11 times out of 10.
In nearly every episode, Jeremy announces he’s had a brainstorm. It usually leads to something brilliant, expensive, and ultimately disastrous. A restaurant. A bee farm. A combine harvester he can’t operate.
That’s something we have in common. I have brainstorms, too. Mine happen on the elliptical or out on a run (as noted, I’m way more fit). Ninety percent of the time, post-endorphin high, they end up “in the bin.”
This morning I had another one.
Welcome to my Friday Brainstorm. Occasional. Subscriber-only. Topical or completely off the rails — depending on the morning.
May Day. An Auspicious One.
Today is May 1st. May Day. International Workers’ Day. And personally — an auspicious one.
Today I’m officially fully independent. No corporate affiliations in the weather data market. No dog in the fight. No answering to the man — though I do answer to my wife. She says jump, I jump. No “how high?” allowed.
That matters for what I write here.
It means I can be unplugged, unrestrained, and unfiltered — about the weather data market, about the organizations that buy it, and about the gap between what they’re paying for and what they’re actually getting.
The opportunities. The failures. The organizational blind spots that leave retailers, CPG brands, restaurant operators, and health care organizations sitting on data they can’t translate into a decision.
And yes, the storm clouds are gathering over the commercial weather data sector itself. I’m looking directly at AI and what it’s about to do to the business of selling what many vendors mischaracterize as “weather intelligence.”
More on all of that in future brainstorms. Today I have a forecast to review.
What NOAA Just Updated — and What It Means
When NOAA issued the initial May outlook in mid-April, there was no meaningful signal for the northern tier. Equal chances. The atmosphere wasn’t “signaling” anything—yet.
I wrote about it here.
Last Friday’s Week 3-4 outlook changed that — cool and wet for the first half of May across the Midwest and Northeast. It filled in the gaps. I wrote about it on Monday.
The wet signal dominating the first half of May outlook doesn’t persist through the full month. The Upper Midwest shifts to a slight dry lean. The Northeast moderates. The monthly outlook is confirming seasonal to slightly below-normal temperatures, with no significant precipitation signal heading into the back half of May.
That’s a very different story from last year. Cool (ish) but dry this year heading into the Memorial Day weekend — compared with last year’s cold, wet disaster — is the setup for much stronger sales of seasonal product categories.
It’s important to note that a prediction of a colder-than-normal May (the entire month!) does not mean it will be cold in those regions every day of the month. Below is how the Weather Channel and its partners at Atmospheric G2 (no relation, although Todd Crawford, the guru behind the prediction, is a friend and former colleague) are calling May compared to normal.
The forecast matches the NOAA probabilities as well as the forecast for the first half of the month; it’s clear May in those regions will be pretty darn cold—especially in the Great Lakes and upper Midwest—which sets up, as I’ve been discussing, a cabin-fever demand breakout during the week leading up to the Memorial Day weekend.
The probability forecast that locks it in — or doesn’t — drops later today when the new Week 3-4 outlook brings Memorial Day into the forecast cone for the first time.
That’s Monday’s story.
Back to Jeremy
At the end of most of Clarkson’s Farm brainstorms, Jeremy ends up covered in mud, over budget, and somehow more optimistic than when he started. That last part is the key. The optimism isn’t despite the mess — it’s because of it. He learned something. He’ll try again.
I get that. The weather data market is complicated. AI is coming for parts of it. The opportunities for organizations that get the translation layer right are enormous. And the May forecast — complicated as it is — is setting up one of the most interesting Memorial Day demand stories in recent memory.
See you on Monday …
— Paul