WeatherWatchTV now has over 100,000 subscribers, larger than Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology and far exceeding the NZ Government’s Niwa Weather and MetService combined. Only 0.7% of those who create content on YouTube globally have 100,000 followers according to Google, which owns YouTube.

As of today WeatherWatchTV has 104K followers, BoM has 103K, MetService has 4.9K and Niwa 8.3K (which includes Niwa science, not just weather).

Collectively MetService and Niwa are tax funded well over 150 million dollars a year. WeatherWatch is a small NZ business with zero Government support.

In recent months WeatherWatchTV gained more new subscribers each and every month than MetService has had in their entire YouTube lifetime, as viewers seek education and understanding of what drives our weather.

Today WeatherWatch.co.nz received a silver plaque from YouTube/Google for our success (photo).

“Those that care about weather in NZ notice how our two Government forecasters both heavily restrict public data along with news outlets becoming extemely tabloid” says WeatherWatch head forecaster Philip Duncan. “Mainstream weather news stories are now often ‘crying wolf’ as those outlets continue to make every weather event highly emotive with over the top headlines, compared to what used to be considered normal severe weather in our country. Having Niwa compete with MetService – which is still occuring – only makes mainstream news content even more over the top”.

Journalists and news outlets used to be cynical of Government warnings – but for years now that is something of the past. Mainstream news outlets just copy, paste and headline the most dramatic parts from two commercial Government forecasters and by doing so now lack the intelligent journalism they apply to other stories – such as politics, economics or healthcare. Those that care about weather notice this drop in standards and have expressed their support of WeatherWatchTV as being honest, ‘old school’ yet also modern and educational.

WeatherWatchTV focuses on what drives your local forecast, giving a big picture that connects us to Australia, the tropics, the Southern Ocean and even sometimes as far away as Africa.

WeatherWatch continues to work closely with MetService to promote their official warnings and work with them on building exciting new services around lightning, while Niwa has become so aggressively commercial they won’t entertain working with us. Despite Niwa being a Crown science research agency their very heavy commercialism now dwarfs the good science they do, especially if they can’t even work with NZ’s largest private forecaster to promote science.

Ultimately the NZ public are the ones deciding what they want and are the ones growing our numbers.

WeatherWatch is actively looking to expand in to Australia over the next 12 months with huge support coming from there. In March this year WeatherWatchTV had 2.6 million viewers, with 250,000 in one video alone for Cyclone Alfred hitting south-east Queensland and the Northern Rivers of New South Wales.

Thank you to everyone across New Zealand and Australia (and the world) for supporting what our small business is doing – we wouldn’t be where we are without your immense support.

• WeatherWatch.co.nz