Студенты Миссисипского университета запустили стартап по прогнозу погоды WBWX

A group of students at Mississippi State University recently launched Will Bratton Weather (WBWX), a small weather start-up based on social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Discord. Since their official launch in June, the company has gained millions of impressions across platforms, including over 100,000 views on both YouTube and Instagram. Will Bratton, a graduate student in professional meteorology and the company’s owner, said he first got the idea over a year ago as an undergraduate at MSU. He said he was inspired by the lack of degreed meteorologists creating digital content about the weather with altruistic motives. He saw many meteorology influencers who were either not technically qualified to give weather reports or were taking advantage of people with clickbait or by sharing untrue facts to scare people for views. “Some of my friends were like, ‘You know, you have a very unique skill set where you could do this yourself, so instead of complaining about it, why don’t you just do it yourself?'” Bratton recalled. After more than a year of planning, Bratton launched his company in June with the help of his friends. After three months, the company has grown to include almost thirty people helping with content, including many MSU students and alumni along with successful meteorologists from around the country. Lórien Gray, a graduate student in professional meteorology and director of operations for WBWX, said that she often helps with content creation and management for the channels. One of the  company’s main types of content is livestreams of severe weather around the country, and Gray is one of the meteorologists, along with Bratton and others, who analyze the weather and share predictions with their audience as severe weather occurs. The team chooses to have multiple meteorologists in a roundtable setting for their broadcasts because they feel it increases credibility and adds an aspect of peer review to the broadcast. “We want to make things accessible as possible for the general public,” Gray said, “so we have to study up on these things that we know very well, but we have to sort of make it more understandable and digestible for the regular person.” Gray said working with Bratton and the team has been very fulfilling, and she enjoys spending time with people so passionate about helping others through meteorology. She remembered that early on, Bratton would often say it did not matter if only one person was watching if it meant they could help that person. “[Bratton] eats, sleeps and breathes this stuff,” Gray said. “There’s so much, like, passion exuding from him.” Bratton said he has been incredibly pleased with the company’s success so far, and he hopes it can one day grow into something that can not only help people watch, but also help beyond that. “I got this message literally like an hour ago, and it says, ‘I was watching from Toledo, Ohio, yesterday. You mentioned there was a tree that fell on a car. She happened to be a friend of mine. Her car was crushed while she was driving, but thankfully she’s okay. Thank you for your live yesterday. The weather was wild here, thank you for keeping us informed,'” Bratton shared. He said that it was those kinds of sentiments that reminded him why he had wanted to start the company in the first place. “I’m sitting here in Starkville, Mississippi, having a positive impact on folks in Toledo, Ohio,” Bratton said, “and they’re getting more severe weather, so it’s, just, it means so much to myself and the entire team to be able to do that to, like, make a difference on people’s lives.” Bratton hopes that, in the future, the company will be popular enough to start a non-profit organization, using profits from the business to help with disaster relief from tornadoes, hurricanes and flooding. Taylor Hunn, a graduate student in professional meteorology and the director of content for WBWX, said that part of her role has been to expand into non-live educational and other content. She shared that she recently wrote an article for WBWX about weather myths, such as the non-existence of heat lightning. Additionally, she helps come up with ideas for content outside of their usual severe weather broadcasting; one recent video shows Hunn, Gray, Bratton and other members of the team trying to pronounce difficult town names across the country. “He has, like, a different variety of videos,” Hunn explained. “Say, he wants to do a case study on a certain tornado event, or something like that, that is mainly what my job is.” Hunn also reiterated Bratton’s goal behind the company, and she said that the entire team views the purpose of the business from the same point of view. “We want to relate to those younger audiences, but also, we do still want to be reliable enough that we can also adhere to the older audiences too, because the older audiences have a lot of storm anxieties,” Hunn said. “Like, here in Mississippi, we have a very, very big population of older folks with severe storm anxiety, and I’ve seen that a lot throughout my career, and one of the goals of this company is really to help ease that anxiety without fear-mongering.” Bratton said he really appreciates the amount of support he has gotten from his friends, team and viewers. “I’m just really honored to be trusted in the community and just blessed to have such an incredible team that’s committed to the process and to our morals and things like that,” Bratton said.