Live radar, severe weather alerts, and a 10-day outlook built for contractors - plan your calls, crews, and truck stock around the weather.
Detecting location…
Weather Guide - What These Numbers Mean
Close
What are degree days?
Degree days measure how much heating or cooling the weather demanded - not just how hot or cold it felt for a moment,
but how much of it there was, day after day. Each day gets a score: take the day's average temperature
(the high and low, split down the middle) and compare it to 65°F, the temperature where most buildings need
neither heat nor air conditioning.
Cooling Degree Days (CDD): how far the average ran above 65°F. A day that averages 85°F earns 20 cooling degree days - a heavy air-conditioning day.
Heating Degree Days (HDD): how far the average ran below 65°F. A day that averages 30°F earns 35 heating degree days - a hard-working furnace day.
Add those daily scores up over a week, a month, or a season and you get one number that summarizes how demanding
the weather was on comfort equipment. Utilities, energy analysts, and well-run contractors have used degree days
for decades for exactly this reason.
Why it matters to us: degree days are the closest thing our industry has to a "weather revenue index."
More cooling degree days means equipment runs longer and harder - more breakdowns, more demand service calls,
more replacement opportunities. A CSR seeing 40+ CDD in the 10-day outlook should expect busy phones and protect
capacity for emergency calls.
How to read the Season Tracker
The Season Tracker totals this year's degree days from January 1 through today and compares them to the
same window last year - the same way you'd compare year-to-date revenue to last year. That
apples-to-apples window is what makes the comparison honest.
If cooling degree days are running 15% hotter than last year, AC service demand and replacement leads should be tracking ahead of last year's pace. If your cooling revenue is flat in a 15%-hotter year, the weather isn't the problem - something else is.
If the season is running cooler than last year and demand calls are down, the weather explains at least part of it. That's useful context before anyone panics about marketing or pricing.
Budgeting and staffing: a persistently hotter or colder trend is an early signal to adjust truck stock, on-call rotations, and sales goals.
What drives the Demand Signals
The signals scan the 10-day forecast for the patterns that reliably move the needle in this trade: extreme heat
(AC no-cool spikes), deep cold (no-heat emergencies), freezing nights (heat pump defrost problems, first-start
furnace failures), thunderstorms (surge and lightning damage, power-cycle no-cools), damaging winds, wet stretches
(sump pump and drainage calls), snow and ice, freeze-thaw swings, and mild windows that are perfect for
maintenance visits and installs. Each signal is written as an action - what to stock, what to staff, what to pitch.
Outdoor work days and wind safety
The Outdoor Work Planner grades each of the next 7 days for ladder, rooftop, attic, and other exposed work.
A day is downgraded for rain chance, heat, cold, thunderstorms - and wind, which matters more than most
schedulers give it credit for. Carrying a ladder or standing on a roof in gusty wind is how people get hurt.
Plan indoor work (red): thunderstorms, rain chance 60%+, highs of 100°F+ or 15°F or below, sustained winds near 30 mph, or gusts of 45 mph or more - that is wind-advisory territory where ladders and rooftops are off the table.
Use caution (amber): rain chance 40%+, very hot or very cold days, snow or ice possible, sustained winds around 20 mph, or gusts of 30 mph or more - schedule roof and ladder work for the calmer morning hours and keep two people on ladder jobs.
Good (green): workable temperatures, low rain chance, manageable wind.
Rule of thumb for dispatchers: when gusts reach the 30s, ask the crew before you book rooftop work;
when gusts reach the 40s, don't book it - reshuffle to indoor calls. The National Weather Service issues Wind
Advisories around sustained 30 mph / gusts 45 mph, and those advisories show up automatically in the alerts
banner at the top of this page.
Dew point vs. humidity
Relative humidity changes with the temperature, which makes it a slippery number. The dew point is steadier
and more honest: it tells you how much moisture is actually in the air. Below 55°F feels dry, 55-63°F is
comfortable, 63-70°F feels sticky, and above 70°F is oppressive.
Why it matters to us: high dew points are latent load - the moisture the AC has to wring out of the air
before the house feels cool. On a 78°F day with a 72°F dew point, systems run long and customers call saying
"it never shuts off" or "it's cool but clammy." That's often normal physics, not a broken unit - a CSR who knows
that can set expectations before rolling a truck. Sticky air also means more condensate, so expect clogged drain
lines and float-switch shutoffs.
Reading the radar
The radar shows precipitation detected by the National Weather Service NEXRAD network over roughly the last hour,
animated so you can see which way storms are moving. Green is light rain, yellow is moderate, orange and red are
heavy downpours, and purple/magenta is intense - often hail or severe storm cores. In winter, lighter blues and
pinks can indicate snow or a wintry mix.
Watch the direction of movement across the loop: if the heavy colors are marching toward a job site, that crew has a window to close up.
The loop is the recent past, not a forecast - pair it with the hourly forecast and the alerts banner for what's coming.
Weather alerts, quickly
Warning = it's happening or imminent - act now (Tornado Warning, Severe Thunderstorm Warning, High Wind Warning).
Watch = conditions are favorable - stay aware, have a plan (Tornado Watch, Winter Storm Watch).
Advisory = less severe but still disruptive - plan around it (Wind Advisory, Heat Advisory, Winter Weather Advisory).
Active alerts for the selected location appear automatically in the red banner at the top of this page, straight
from the National Weather Service.