Getting the heads up on the weather and what to expect is important – especially when you’re dealing with precipitation far more powerful than April showers, like the series of tornadoes currently decimating the Deep South.
Understory, which installs grids of weather sensing hardware and uses data systems to better track storms, pocketed on Wednesday $1.9 million. The startup,which works out of Downtown Boston hardware seed-stage fund BOLT, will use the fresh funding to kickstart the deployment of its patent-pending weather station network across the Kansas City, MO. metro area, which makes up part of “Tornado Alley.”
Whereas traditional, radar-enabled weather centers collect data by analyzing conditions in the atmosphere, the startup’s networks detects rain, hail, wind and other weather events directly at the earth’s surface, where the risk to life and property is greatest.
The Kansas City project is part of a deal inked with American Family Insurance. Insurance providers in particular want to know about the climatic conditions facing their potential and existing customers. “They can call customers, instead of waiting for the customer to call them. [Understory] lets them be proactive,” Understory cofounder Alex Kubicek told BostInno.
Typically, there is only one weather station every 40 kilometers, explained Kubicek. Boston’s token station, for example, is at Logan Airport, which explains why, when it’s rainy in the North End, your weather app might still say it’s only cloudy.
“Meteorologists have to cut a lot of corners in forecasting because they just don’t have enough data on the ground,” continued Kubicek.
The company hopes to solve the sparse weather data problem by installing 50 weather stations within that same 40 kilometers, meaning that it’s systems can gather much more, and more specific, data. That data, neatly packaged in Understory’s software platform, can then be sold to insurance providers.
The big project means Understory will need additional brainpower. The three-person company hopes to expand its team to 10 by the end of year.
The seed round was led by Palo Alto, CA-based True Ventures, with participation from RRE Ventures, Vegas Tech Fund, SK Ventures and Andrew C. Payne.
Image via Understory
