As always, I wanted to start by thanking all supporters of Weather West.
Just by reading, interacting with, and sharing my articles, social media posts, and YouTube livestreams, you are helping to spread the word and to build the Weather West audience.
At the same time, the tangible costs of operating a high-traffic website without a specific revenue source--focused on public education and engagement surrounding weather, climate, wildfire, and the broader Earth system--have never been higher.
For many years, I've used standard web display advertisements to help fill the gap, but this has never offset more than a fraction of the total annual operating cost of running weatherwest.com, various social media channels, and (more recently) the Weather West YouTube channel. I realize that most contemporary "influencers" have aggressively monetized their social media presence, but I've never done so since I think it greatly distracts from the important and timely messages at hand. I'm just not willing to engage in the kind of "clickbait" and exaggeration required to translate a decidedly considerable audience into a reliable advertising-based revenue source. I am, at heart, a scientist compelled to be as honest and contextually balanced as possible in my public communications, and I just think that the contemporary "influencer-sphere" is most often directly antithetical to that goal.
My solution? Increasingly, I've relied upon voluntary support from the Weather West audience to offset rapidly rising costs and create a web presence that remains grounded and sustainable. I don't want to raise paywalls, since I believe that universal access to this kind of information and discussion is genuinely important (now more than ever). More "walled gardens" are the last thing we need right now. So the generosity of a small fraction (less than 0.5%) of Weather West readers has, in effect, helped to subsidize the experience for everyone else.
2026 marks Weather West's 20th anniversary on the web, believe it or not! That means the website, and the community that has grown around it, has officially outlasted over 90% of Silicon Valley startups. And much has changed over those 20 years: the website, and my broader online presence, have expanded dramatically over that time horizon. One thing that has not really changed is Weather West's "distinctly Web 1.0 aesthetic," which remains primarily a conscious design choice: I'm a big fan of not fixing things that aren't broken.
Stylistic choices aside, though, the internet of 2026 is not the internet of 2006. Most services that were once cheap or free are now heavily commoditized, and involve accelerating monthly expenditures via dozens of subscriptions. Cybersecurity is no longer a concern only for big and important websites; software and servers need to be kept constantly up-to-date to keep visitors safe and the site itself robust against incursions by automated bots and from attacks by motivated individuals and entities. (Yes, even Weather West has been a frequent target of both.)
At the same time, the broader online experience has become degraded by increasingly hostile user interfaces, bombardment by intrusive and inappropriate ads, and (more recently) the proliferation of "AI slop." My goal is to stem the tide, at least in this one corner of the internet, to the greatest extent possible.
That's why, this year, I'm announcing several modest but important changes:
1) I'm upgrading Weather West on the "backend" so that it better aligns with modern browsers, devices, and security best-practices. Visible changes will be slim to none, though hopefully the site will load faster with fewer "glitches" for many folks. Web 2.0 on the inside, but still Web 1.0 on the outside.
2) I am hoping to scale back, and potentially eliminate entirely depending on the level of support, display advertising on both weatherwest.com and on YouTube livestreams. This will, I hope, greatly improve the user experience on multiple levels.
3) I am scaling up my invitation to all Weather West readers and viewers to support the channel directly, on a one-time or recurring basis, via the multiple options that are now available (directly via the Membership page on weatherwest.com, as a channel member on YouTube, on Patreon, and/or on Buy Me a Coffee).
4) While direct financial supporters of Weather West will mainly be doing so voluntarily, I will introduce one new and hopefully desirable "perk" as a small token of my thanks: All recurring contributors, at all levels across all support channels, will receive access to a special "Ask Me Anything" style live and interactive YouTube event twice annually. These events will be timed specifically so that they do not coincide with periods of active or dangerous weather (since I still believe that full open access is critical in all such cases), and a link will be sent to all recurring members in advance directly via their platform of support.
So thank you all, once again, for your continued and generous support--and here's to entering the third (!) decade of Weather West with renewed momentum.