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Life Adaptable to Weather and Climate
We provide weather and climate information to help protect our lives, property, and economy. By delivering precise, actionable guidance to transportation operators and the public, we contribute to building disaster-resilient cities and communities capable of rapid recovery.
Building a Disaster-Resilient Society Through Weather Forecasting
Weathernews provides weather risk management services to corporate customers responsible for transportation infrastructure including shipping, aviation, roads, and railways. We call these services collectively Transportation Weather. Transportation infrastructure is the foundation of society, and strengthening its safety directly improves resilience against meteorological disasters. We also support individual users by incorporating their Weather Reports to deliver high-precision forecasts for sudden, localized weather events, and by enabling users to share real-time weather risk information such as tornado sightings and road flooding reports.
Transportation Weather Services (Railway)
Our railway services trace their origins to the 2005 Uetsu Main Line accident, when powerful wind gusts caused a train to derail and overturn, claiming precious lives. Strong winds pose a serious and direct risk to safe railway operation. Rain-induced landslides, along with snow and ice, can also disrupt train operations and cause equipment failures.
Judging the right timing for suspension, resumption, and inspection is extremely difficult with conventional forecasts alone, which lack the section-by-section, time-by-time detail that railway operations require. Observed values and empirical rules alone cannot account for all weather risks, making these decisions inherently challenging. Using our proprietary observation infrastructure and rainfall analysis, Weathernews can detect dangerous conditions even in areas without observation instruments. We notify railway operators several days in advance about the specific locations and sections where strong winds or heavy rain are expected, supporting informed decisions on planned suspensions. We also identify when weather impacts are expected to ease, helping operators determine the right timing for inspection and service resumption. We are actively working to minimize risks from extreme weather through gust warning systems, underground station flood alerts based on rainfall analysis, and revised operation planning for the Shinkansen and other services.
Weathernews was founded to protect the safety of sailors following a maritime accident caused by a bomb cyclone that claimed many lives. The commitment to saving as many lives as possible through weather and climate intelligence is embedded in our company's DNA, and it lives on in our Transportation Weather services today.
Transportation Weather Services (Road)
As a cornerstone of social infrastructure, road management must address weather risks such as vehicles becoming stranded in heavy snow, landslides triggered by heavy rain, and reduced safety from flooding and icy road surfaces. By monitoring conditions through our proprietary observation radars and rainfall analysis to detect heavy rain, snowfall, strong winds, and more, we provide early warnings to road administrators about hazardous areas. We aim for zero traffic disasters by enabling rapid and reliable advance road closures, snow removal, de-icing operations, and proactive driver advisories recommending they avoid travel where necessary.
Effectively managing disaster and congestion risks with limited resources requires identifying the most efficient and targeted approach. Our system judgment support service quantifies road weather risks and works closely with road administrators to find the most effective solutions.
For logistics operators and individual drivers, time-impacting traffic congestion is one of the most pressing risks to manage. To help avoid congestion, we deliver real-time observations and precise weather forecasts across multiple platforms and devices, including smartphones and displays at rest facilities.
Road closure decisions and other safety measures have traditionally been guided by historical records, but increasingly, abnormal weather is producing conditions that fall outside any historical precedent. Even in such situations, protecting the safety and peace of mind of drivers and pedestrians remains our priority. We continue to strengthen our services through ongoing infrastructure investment, real-time condition monitoring, and close collaboration with road administrators.
Weather Forecasts Created Together
In recent years, extreme weather events including heat waves, typhoons, sudden localized downpours, and heavy snow have been on the rise due to climate change. For effective disaster prevention and mitigation, more granular, real-time weather forecasting is needed now more than ever.
Weathernews has been building weather forecasts with user participation since 2005. In addition to conventional weather observation data, we incorporate user-submitted Weather Reports covering local sky conditions and on-the-ground observations into our prediction models as real-time sensing input. This has enabled us to deliver highly precise, detailed forecasts, including predictions for sudden localized thunderstorms that are notoriously difficult to forecast, and the industry's first 5-minute interval weather updates.
Our forecasts currently maintain an accuracy rate of over 90%, and the cumulative total of Weather Reports received from users has reached 100 million (as of July 2025) since the service launched in November 2005.
Actively engaging with Weather Reports and staying attuned to changes in sky conditions builds a deeper understanding of meteorological phenomena and strengthens each individual's awareness of disaster prevention. We believe that when people correctly understand weather and disaster information during emergencies and act decisively, both for their own safety and in support of those around them, it contributes to the resilience of communities and society as a whole.
Going forward, we remain committed to providing the world's most reliable weather information, together with our users, to minimize the damage caused by meteorological phenomena, and to fostering greater disaster prevention awareness across society.
Commitment to Realizing a Sustainable Society
Transportation weather management faces a wide range of challenges, from protecting human lives and securing routes for post-disaster rescue and recovery, to protecting economic activity by preventing operation stoppages through effective safety management.
Climate change means that weather events beyond historical records may occur with increasing frequency. We believe this is precisely why continuous improvement in forecast accuracy and field experience matters more than ever. Weathernews will continue to protect lives, property, and economic activity by detecting natural disaster risks through weather and climate forecasting and communicating them swiftly to transportation operators and the public. Together with our corporate customers and supporters, we are committed to building a society resilient to natural disasters.
