{"id":20136,"date":"2026-03-26T10:18:50","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T10:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/the-snow-gods-how-a-couple-of-ski-bums-built-the-internets-best-weather-app\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T10:18:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T10:18:50","slug":"the-snow-gods-how-a-couple-of-ski-bums-built-the-internets-best-weather-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/the-snow-gods-how-a-couple-of-ski-bums-built-the-internets-best-weather-app\/","title":{"rendered":"The snow gods: How a couple of ski bums built the internet\u2019s best weather app"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The best snow-forecasting app for skiers and snowboarders isn\u2019t from any of the federally funded weather services. Nor from any of the big-name brands. It\u2019s an independent app startup that leverages government data, its own AI models, and decades of alpine-life experience to offer better snow (and soon avalanche) predictions than anything else out there.<\/p>\n

Skiers in the know follow OpenSnow and won\u2019t bother heading to the mountains\u2014from Alpine Meadows to Mont Blanc, Crested Butte to Killington\u2014unless this small team of trusted weathered men tells them to. (And yes, they\u2019re all men.) The app has made microcelebrities of its forecasters, who sift through and analyze reams of data to write \u201cDaily Snow\u201d reports for locations throughout the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m F-list famous,\u201d OpenSnow founding partner and forecaster Bryan Allegretto says with a laugh. \u201cNot even D-list.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The app has proved especially vital this year, which has been one of the weirder winters on record. The US West saw very little daily snow, despite an intense storm cycle that led to one of the deadliest avalanches in history. That storm was followed by one of the fastest melts in memory, and several resorts in California are already shutting down for the season. Meanwhile, in the East, the ongoing snowfall has offered a rare gift: a deep and seemingly endless winter..\u00a0<\/p>\n

MIT Technology Review<\/em> caught up with Allegretto, better known as BA, in the Tahoe mountains to talk about the weather, AI, avalanches, and how a little weather app became the closest thing powder-hounds have to a crystal ball: a daily dump of the freshest, most decipherable, and most micro-accurate forecasts in the biz. And how two once-broke ski bums\u2014Allegretto and his Colorado counterpart, CEO Joel Gratz\u2014 managed to bootstrap a business and turn an email list of 37 into a cult following half a million strong.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for clarity and accuracy.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

You grew up in New Jersey. Middle of the pack as far as snowy states. What were your winters like as a kid? <\/strong>
<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was always obsessed with weather. Especially severe weather. Nor\u2019easters. There was the blizzard of \u201989<\/a>, I believe, that hit the East Coast hard\u2014dropped two to three feet of snow, which was a lot for the Jersey Shore. My dad worked for the highway authority, so he had tools other than the evening news. He was in charge of calling out the snowplows whenever it snowed, so I just remember chasing storms with my dad. I wasn\u2019t allowed to ride in<\/em> the snowplows. I\u2019d watch them. When I got older, I was the one shoveling the neighbors\u2019 driveways. I just liked being out there. In it. In college, I used to go around and shovel all the girls\u2019 sidewalks. That was fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When did you start skiing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We would cut school and take a bus to go skiing, unbeknownst to our parents. It was the \u201990s, and the surfers decided snowboarding would be fun, so the local surf shop started\u00a0 running a bus and all these surfers would show up and hop the bus to Hunter Mountain. We\u2019d drive to the Poconos, go night skiing, turn around. It wasn\u2019t uncommon for me in high school to get in the car by myself, either \u2014and just drive. Me, my dog, my backpack. I\u2019d sleep in gas stations and ski. <\/strong>Storm-chasing around the Northeast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What were you really chasing, you think?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Natural highs. Happiness. I\u2019ve always been a soul-searcher. I grew up in a crazy house situation, a broken home. My dad left. My mom became a drug addict. I just wanted to be gone. I\u2019m the oldest. I was always trying to help my mom and make sure she was okay. No one was telling me to go to school and have a career. I just wanted to do something that fulfills me.<\/p>\n

How\u2019d you go about figuring out what that was?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

For me, to go to school was a big task, given where I was coming out of. There wasn\u2019t any money. I could get grants and scholarships because my mom was so poor. I wanted to go to Penn State but didn\u2019t have the grades. I ended up at Kean, a public university in New Jersey. It had a meteorology program. We got to go to New York City, to NBC, and practiced on the green screen. In meteorology school, I started thinking: How do I work in the ski and snowboard industry and use weather at the same time?<\/em> I went to Rowan [University] for business, in South Jersey, and in between moved to Hawaii to surf and spent a year teaching snowboarding. My goal the whole time was to not work in a career I hated.<\/p>\n

I imagine you weren\u2019t like most meteorology students.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Us punk rockers, skaters, snowboarders\u2014we were a little different than the typical meteorology nerds. I was the radical storm chaser. A big personality. I still am.<\/p>\n

You didn\u2019t quite fit the traditional weatherman mold.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back then, there were no smartphones or social media. If you were a meteorologist, you either worked in a cubicle for the government or at an insurance company assessing weather risk.\u00a0 Or you were on the local news. That wasn\u2019t my thing. They didn\u2019t want Grizzly Adams up there with his big beard. <\/p>\n

Beards belong in the mountains?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meteorologists live in cities because that\u2019s where the jobs are. They don\u2019t live in small mountain towns.\u00a0 That\u2019s what was missing in the industry. When I moved to Tahoe, in 2006, I realized nobody had any trust in the weather forecasts. It was more like a \u201cWe\u2019ll believe it when we see it\u201d old-fashioned mentality. If you\u2019re a forecaster in flat areas, you just look at the weather model and regurgitate the news. Weathermen in Sacramento or Reno didn\u2019t give a crap about the ski resorts! They\u2019d just say \u201cWe\u2019ll see three feet above 6,000 feet\u201d and go on to the next segment. And skiers were like: \u201cWait a minute. Is it going to be windy at the top?\u201d I thought: Let\u2019s home in and give skiers what they\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n

So you were living in Tahoe, skiing and forecasting?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was working in the office at a resort, snowboarding, and doing weather on the side. I\u2019d get up at 4 a.m. and do it before my 9 a.m. day job. Forecasting, figuring out: How the heck do these storms interact with these mountains? I started emailing everyone in the office what I\u2019d see coming, and people kept saying \u201cAdd me! Add me!\u201d\u00a0 Eventually, resorts around Tahoe started asking to use my forecasts.<\/p>\n

How were you actually forecasting, though?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The NOAA, the GFS [Global Forecasting System], the Canadian model, the Euro model, German, Japanese\u2014all these governments make these weather models to forecast the weather. And share it. Anyone can access it. But you can\u2019t just look at a weather model and go, Yep, that\u2019s what\u2019s going to happen.<\/em> That\u2019s not how it works in the mountains. It\u2019s way harder. You can\u2019t rely on model data. It\u2019s low-res, forecasting for a grid area that\u2019s too big. It can\u2019t understand what\u2019s going on. It\u2019s going to generalize the weather. You can try that, but you\u2019re going to be wrong. A lot of people are going to stop listening. I was able to forecast more accurately than most people because I was living there; I could fix a lot of these errors. Around 2007, I started my own website, Tahoe Weather Discussion.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Bryan
Bryan Allegretto (right) on the lift with OpenSnow CEO Joel Gratz and Gratz\u2019 wife Lauren.<\/figcaption>
COURTESY OF BRYAN ALLEGRETTO<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Snazzy. <\/strong>
<\/strong>
<\/strong>Meanwhile, I heard about this guy Joel out in Boulder, Colorado. People were telling us about each other, saying: \u201cYou guys are doing the same thing!\u201d He was sleeping on his friend\u2019s couch, running a site called Colorado Powder Forecast. And then there was Evan [Thayer, who would later join the company], in Utah. I think his website was called Wasatch Forecast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Great minds!<\/strong>
<\/strong>
<\/strong>He actually grew up outside Philly, only about an hour from me. We both were obsessed with storms and snow and moved west to the mountains and started similar websites. We would\u2019ve been best friends as kids! Anyway, Joel called me in 2010 and was like, \u201cHey. I\u2019m building this site, forecasting skiing in ski states.\u201d And wanted me to join. He knew I had big traffic. He was like, \u201cLet\u2019s do it together, not against each other.\u201d I asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s the pay?\u201d He said, Zero. Give me your company.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

And you just said: Yeah, sounds good<\/em>? <\/p>\n

<\/strong>I just really trusted him. He\u2019d asked Evan too\u2014but Evan was like, Give you my site and my traffic for free?? No, I built this.<\/em><\/p>\n

A normal response. <\/strong>
<\/strong>
<\/strong>I was the knucklehead that was like, okay. Evan was still single. I already had a wife and two kids. I\u2019d just had my son. I was working two jobs. I was so overwhelmed. So busy with my day job, as an account manager at the Ritz at North Star. Vail had just bought them and we all thought we were going to lose our jobs. My site was struggling. I was desperate for somebody to do it with. I think I thought it was a good opportunity. I was scared, though. For sure.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was 15 years ago. <\/strong> How\u2019d OpenSnow work in the old days?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We were just using our brains. That\u2019s how it started: with us using our brains<\/em>.Looking at all the weather models\u2014all the data from the government models and airplanes, satellites, balloons. A million places. Building spreadsheets and fixing all the errors in the forecast models. We\u2019d take the data and reconfigure it\u2014appropriate it for the mountains. It was all manual for a really long time.<\/p>\n

How manual?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was old-school. All the resorts had snowfall reports on their sites, and I was the one hand-keying it in: \u201cthree to six inches.\u201d That was me on the back end, typing it in every single morning for every single ski resort. It\u2019d take me hours<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And then?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Around 2018, we built our own weather model to do what we were doing. We called it METEOS. It\u2019s an acronym\u2014I can\u2019t even remember what it stood for!\u00a0 METEOS was just us using our brains and our experience to create formulas. It automated everything and allowed us to create a grid across the whole world and forecast for any GPS point. It took all this data, ingested it, fixed some of it, and then spit out a forecast for any location. In the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Were you guys making any money?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was crap in the beginning. Advertising-based. We stole Eric Strassburger from The Denver Post <\/em>\u2014he doubled our ad revenue in his first year full-time with us. Still, Google Ads had chopped our ad rates in half; it wasn\u2019t a good long-term strategy to rely just on ads. We had to pivot to plan B so we didn\u2019t go out of business.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Subscriptions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When all the newspapers started charging to read articles, Joel was like: We are meteorologists writing columns every day. Journalism weather is not sustainable! We need to be a weather site. We need to be a weather app.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

What happened when you moved from ads to subscriptions?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The money took off. \u00a0We could quit our day jobs and work full time on OpenSnow. The company exploded. We were like: Are people gonna really pay for this?<\/em> They did! Although they could still access the majority of the site for free.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the end of 2021, you put in a pay wall?
<\/strong>
That\u2019s when we panicked! We\u2019re gonna lose 90% of our customers! But 10% will stay loyal and pay. <\/em>Since the beginning, there\u2019s been only two times our traffic went down: the paywall and covid. Otherwise, every year it\u2019s gone up. People were like, Okay I can\u2019t live without this<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I admit, I\u2019m one of those people. So is my editor. Any other weather app is useless for skiers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When it comes to ski towns, everyone uses OpenSnow. When the Tahoe avalanche happened<\/a>, we were up early on search-and-rescue calls, helping the rescuers with forecasts. We\u2019re now the official lead forecast providers for Ski California. Ski Utah. Head of Forecasting for National Ski Patrol. Professional Ski Instructors of America. US Collegiate Ski & Snowboard Association. Dozens of destinations and ski resorts. Joel doesn\u2019t like to talk about it publicly, but our renewals and retention and open rates blow away the industry standards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I bet. OpenSnow is like a benevolent cult.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

People connect with a small company with underground roots. We\u2019re independent. Fourteen full-time, plus seasonal. About half have meteorology backgrounds, from bachelor\u2019s to doctoral degrees. Our very first employee was Sam Collentine,\u00a0 a meteorology student in Boulder, who started as an intern in 2012 and is now our COO and does everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sounds like employees <\/strong>and <\/em><\/strong>subscribers sign on and just \u2026 stay.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everyone stays! Our cofounder Andrew Murray, Joel\u2019s friend and OpenSnow\u2019s web designer, left around 2021. But yeah, people feel like they know us. They\u2019ve been reading me in Tahoe with their coffee for 20 years! I get recognized everywhere I go. For example, I broke my binding, and went into a ski shop and asked if I could demo. And the guy was like, ARE YOU BA? Just take it!<\/em> Sounds fun\u2014until you just want to have dinner with your family, or buy a glove. Joel gets the same thing\u2014people make Joel shrines in the slopes that look like Catholic candles.<\/p>\n

You guys are like modern-day snow gods. Gods of snow.<\/strong><\/p>\n

People are weird.<\/p>\n

How weird?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Someone once sent me a photo, saying: \u201cLook, my friend dressed up as you for Halloween!\u201d <\/strong>People are always inviting me over to dinner, to PlumpJack with Jonny Moseley. I guess they want to hang out with the \u201cWho\u2019s who of Tahoe.\u201d <\/strong>There was an executive from Pixar who had me to his multimillion-dollar home on the west shore of Lake Tahoe. He had a photo of me over the fireplace in the bathroom. I thought: That\u2019s weird, he has a photo of me over the fireplace. <\/em>What was even weirder, though: It was autographed. I\u2019ve never autographed a photo in my life! This guy just signed it\u2014himself. I didn\u2019t say anything. I just left.<\/p>\n

Do you get a lot of hate mail? Mean DMs?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thousands. People think I can make it snow. I think they think I\u2019m to blame when it doesn\u2019t. The other day, someone messaged me on Instagram with a picture I\u2019d posted over California of the high-pressure map\u2014somebody had shared it, and wrote \u201cFuck Bryan Allegretto\u201d over the high pressure.<\/p>\n

Hilarious.<\/strong><\/p>\n

People were yelling at me during covid: You\u2019re encouraging people to go out skiing!<\/em> It wasn\u2019t March 202o, it was January 2022. I\u2019ve since deleted my personal social media. I never wanted to be in the spotlight. That\u2019s the whole reason signing off my forecasts with \u201cBA\u201d became a thing\u2014 I didn\u2019t want to use my full name. I just do it because it\u2019s good for the company. Joel realized years ago that people come to us for forecasts \u2014and forecasters<\/em>. That\u2019s why we still have forecasters. Even though AI can do what we\u2019re doing now.<\/p>\n

Is<\/em> AI doing what you do now?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We were using METEOS until this season. In December, we launched PEAKS. We built our own machine-learning model. The AI is taking what we were doing\u2014and doing it everywhere, faster. The whole world instantly, in minutes. It can go back and actually ingest decades<\/em> of government data\u2014estimated weather conditions over the entire US from 1979 to 2021\u2014and correct the errors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What makes it so accurate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before PEAKS, it wasn\u2019t very specific. The data used to be what Joel calls \u201cblobby\u201d\u2014like giant blobs, just big splotches of color over a mountain range. It\u2019s like, if you take a pen and press into a piece of paper, the ink will spill out. The AI is like if you just tap the paper. A dot versus a blot. Now we can know how much it will snow, say, in the parking lot at Palisades and <\/em>how much at the summit. It\u2019s less blobby, more rigid and defined.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Defined how?<\/strong><\/p>\n

All weather models output forecasts on a grid. The gridpoints are essentially averaged data over the grid box. So a model with a 25-kilometer grid resolution averages data over 25 kilometers, or around 16 miles. This is far too large an area, especially in mountainous terrains where a few miles can make a massive difference in experienced conditions. The AI is downscaling the models into smaller and smaller grid boxes. We are able to train a model to transform lower-resolution data from the same period into this high-resolution \u201cground truth\u201d data. Then the model can generalize this training to global real-time downscaling. PEAKS is learning wind patterns, thermal gradients, terrain, and weather patterns and connecting all these factors to learn how to transition from coarse resolution into high, three-kilometer resolution\u2014leading to more precise forecasts. We\u2019ve basically taught the AI how to forecast like us. Except 50% more accurate. Now, when I wake up at 4 a.m., PEAKS has already done it.<\/p>\n

So \u2026 then what are you doing at four in the morning? <\/strong>

<\/strong>Oh, I\u2019ll still do the forecasting. I like to double-check it\u2014but I don\u2019t really need to. PEAKS has allowed me to spend more time on writing. Now instead of spending four hours forecasting and then rushing to write it,\u00a0 I\u2019ve been able to make my forecasts more interesting, more entertaining. Yeah, AI could probably write it\u2014but I want to. It\u2019s all about the personal connection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How did last year\u2019s federal funding cuts for the NWS and NOAA affect your business? Are you guys concerned about that going forward?<\/strong>

<\/strong>We had those discussions when it first happened. In forecasting, you still need humans: to launch the weather balloon, staff the weather stations, collect the initial data. Some people in our office panicked\u2014they had spouses or friends getting laid off. We were wondering if we\u2019d have less data coming in, if it\u2019d make the models less accurate. But the backlash in the weather community was swift. I think they were like, There are important things you can\u2019t cut.<\/em> It was pretty short-term. Are we worried going forward?\u00a0 No, not as long as the data keeps coming in! We won\u2019t survive without the government publishing data.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We recently bought a small company called StormNet<\/a> that tracks severe weather, probability of lightning, hail, tornadoes. We just launched it. Used to be like, \u201cThe storm is an hour away.\u201d Now we can say, \u201cIn seven days there might be a tornado here.\u201d And next winter, we\u2019re working on a feature that can help forecast avalanches using AI. Right now, it\u2019s still manual\u2014people going out testing the snow layers. Forecasting is limited. This wouldn\u2019t replace the avalanche centers, but it will be able to look at everything, including slope angle and previous weather and current conditions, and forecast further out, give people more advance\u2014and location specific\u2014warning. Help alert the public sooner.<\/p>\n

Help save lives.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I talked to one of the guys who left<\/a> the Frog Lake huts on Sunday, before the storm. Before the group that was caught in the Tahoe avalanche. He told me: \u201cPeople are always like, Oh, it\u2019s never as bad as they say.<\/em> But I read OpenSnow. I could tell by the language you were using, that we should get the heck out of there. I wanted no part of that.\u201d We don\u2019t hype storms. Or sugarcoat. Our only incentive is to be accurate.<\/p>\n

True that it was the biggest storm in Tahoe in four decades?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1982, we got 118 inches over five days, and this one was 111 inches\u2014two storms of similar size created the same level tragedy<\/a>. It\u2019s too much, too fast. <\/strong>It was snowing three to four inches an hour. That was the fastest we\u2019ve seen. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s the bigger story\u2014the fact that we\u2019ve had the biggest storm in over four decades <\/strong>or the fact that all that snow disappeared in five days.<\/p>\n

Do you worry about the future of OpenSnow given, you know, the future<\/em> of<\/em> snow<\/em>?<\/strong>

<\/strong>We\u2019ve had the second-warmest March in at least 45 years. We\u2019re just getting these wild swings now. The seasonal snow averages are almost the same, but we\u2019re seeing more variability than we did in the 1980s and \u201990s. We\u2019re either getting really cold and really warm, or really dry and really wet.<\/p>\n

Bad years can affect our business, for sure.\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly affecting the industry\u2014I know Vail, Alterra took big hits this year. Usually we\u2019re okay, because if it\u2019s dry in Tahoe, it\u2019s snowing in Utah or Colorado. Our three biggest markets. I don\u2019t recall a season where the whole, entire West was in the same boat. It\u2019s been the worst year in the West. Yet our traffic keeps going up. Everything is up. The East Coast had a good year, Japan, BC. We\u2019re slowly expanding in those places. It happens to be the first year in 15 years we started marketing. Marketing works!<\/p>\n

Amazing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Joel and I have had this repeat conversation for years\u2014we just had it again two weeks ago: \u201cCan you believe<\/em> what we\u2019ve done? This was never the goal.\u201d I\u2019m still blown away daily. We\u2019ve never borrowed from investors. No series A, B, C. We\u2019ve gotten offers to sell, but no. We\u2019re still having too much fun. All I know is: Joel and I didn\u2019t come from money. We\u2019ve never chased money or fame, and got both. I think it\u2019s because <\/em>we never chased them. We\u2019ve always chased the joy of skiing and forecasting powder, and doing that for other people.We were just trying to create something that made us happy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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