Whenever we tune into the TV news in the winter months, we are sure to see stories about the latest storm that is pummeling the Midwest, the lake-effect snow that is piling up on Buffalo, or the latest Nor’easter that is heading up the coast to New England. Our lives seems to revolve around the current weather, whether it means there will be school cancellations, problems getting into work, or difficulty starting a campfire at a campsite the following night.

If you run a campground, you know that your customers are craving the latest weather forecast. If the weekend is going to be sunny and warm, you are sure to get a barrage of last-minute callers inquiring about vacancies. If the weather is bad, you can count on calls attempting cancellations due to the sudden death of Aunt Clara or young Billy’s sudden case of the mumps. Inclement weather forecasts are a good reminder for why your business needs to have a clearly written cancellation policy in place.

Years ago, when I worked rather extensively with the New England ski industry, it was my understanding that the major ski resorts made an annual practice of wining and dining the chief meteorologists at major market TV stations, in attempt to get them to put a more positive spin on upcoming snowstorms. Like the glass that is both half empty and half full, the same snowstorm can be described in terms of gloom and doom or as the driving force behind the best ski conditions in years.

All that aside, your campers are always going to be obsessed with the weather forecast for next weekend. You can’t fight human nature. When it comes to online weather, there are two major competitors and two major players: The Weather Channel’s Weather.com and AccuWeather’s AccuWeather.com. They each have more than one free option. If you would like to post the current weather conditions and forecast on your website, here is how to do it.

The Weather Channel / Weather.com

Let’s start with Weather.com and its Weather Widget. This could not be simpler to create and install on your site. To put a Weather Widget on your website is as easy as going to Weather.com, scrolling down to the bottom of the page, clicking on “Weather Tools” (under the “Our Products” menu), then clicking on the “WEATHER Widget” link. Enter your city or zip code, choose Fahrenheit or Celsius, choose a horizontal or vertical orientation (whichever will fit better on your website), choose one of 10 themes (including Outdoors), the click on the “Get the Code” link. Copy and paste (or send to your webmaster). It’s as easy as that. For a direct link, go to:
www.weather.com/services/oap/weather-widgets.html

If you would like a similar but somewhat more robust option, start at the same page, but click on the “NEW & Improved Weather On Your Website” link. This one will associate the weather widget with your specific website and its authorized domain. In subsequent steps, this tool will allow you to choose one of four sizes and orientations, will display your city or town name, and will allow you to choose from twice as many background images or one of two seasonal collections (which alternate four images with the seasons.) Depending upon the size of the widget, it will also allow you to display localized real-time information showing your choice of several options that include wind speed and direction, humidity, UV index, atmospheric pressure, dew point, visibility, and the dreaded “chance of precipitation”. In exchange for being able to embed this tool onto your website, you will also choose a category for the unobtrusive advertising text links that will appear on your widget. Again, when you are finished, you will get a snippet of code (in this case, longer than the code for the basic website widget) that you or your webmaster will be able to insert into your site. For a direct link, go to:
http://www.weather.com/services/oap.html

AccuWeather.com

From the AccuWeather.com website, click on the “Apps & Downloads” icon and link at the bottom of the page. Then choose the “FREE Weather for Your Site” option for the AccuWeather Widget, which is created with a responsive design that will automatically scale for readability on virtually any desktop computer or mobile device. Basically, there are two weather widgets that can be used either individually or in combination. The first is the Current Weather Widget, the second is the 36 Hour Weather Widget, and the third is a combination Linked Weather Widget.

The Current Weather Widget comes in one of four sizes, and the 36 Hour Weather Widget is fully responsive, scaling from 890 pixels down to 320 pixels, depending upon the device. (You can even preview this feature prior to downloading the code!) With either widget, you can set the forecast for a fixed location (presumably your campground’s location) or set it to auto detect the user’s location (not as useful in your instance). You can also choose a language, which is very useful if you have a version of your website in Spanish, French, or another language other than English.

Finally, the AccuWeather widgets include the popular hourly forecasts, links to a local video forecast, radar, and weather maps. For a direct link, go to:
http://www.accuweather.com/en/free-weather-widgets

Weather, love it or hate it. However you look at it, your business needs it, and your customers want access to this information. Would you rather they get it from you or from somebody else?