When climate scientist Nick Cavanaugh lived in Seattle, he was able to experience running next to lush green trees, snowboarding or skiing on freshly snow-capped mountains and climbing sleet-colored boulders – sometimes within the same day.
But for those looking to visit Seattle for the first time, weather could get in the way of experiencing those things.
That was partially Cavanaugh’s inspiration for Sensible Weather, a weather assurance platform he founded in 2019. Last week the company announced a partnership with Kampgrounds of America Inc.
The Santa Monica-based company collects climate data from a variety of sources, including ships and satellites, to help travelers insure their weather-dependent trips. Over the years, Sensible Weather has partnered with a slew of companies that are affected by weather, such as the Professional Golf Association and its golf parks, Gulf Islands Waterpark, and the La Playa Beach and Golf Resort. Through Sensible Weather, visitors can book activities like water skiing, hiking or camping, and get refunded if a storm, flood or mudslide prevents them from doing those activities.
“By early June, 40% of campers said they had altered plans due to weather,” Diane Eichler, the senior vice president of marketing at Kampgrounds of America, said in a statement. “Outdoor hospitality can be heavily impacted by the weather.”
The rise of weather protection
Established companies are leaning into the travel space, too. Havila Voyages, a cruise company based out of Norway, offers free cruises if passengers don’t see the green, glowing Northern Lights on their trip. Boyne Mountain Resort allows visitors to turn in lift tickets if the snow doesn’t meet expectations and come back on a different day. Even SeaWorld offers broad protection if rides are closed due to poor weather, or if heat at the parks exceeds 109 degrees.
“We’re effectively scalable. If you were at a single location, if you could check your thermometer and you don’t have that many guests and it’s OK to issue rain checks or refunds on a day, that’s fine. We encourage you to do that,” said Cavanaugh, chief executive at Sensible Weather. “Where we appeal is if you run a very large operation where that becomes a customer service headache to actually manage, we automate all that.”
There are other use cases for valuable climate data – in fact, Cavanaugh spent his time pre-Sensible Weather analyzing climate data at the weather-focused hedge fund Cumulus and exploring climate’s impact on commodity pricing. Startups in this space have raised roughly $887 million since 2015 to address billion-dollar concerns surrounding climate change and its long-term weather effects, like helping farmers foresee when and where they should plant crops or allowing developers to gain insight on the potential risks of building property in areas that may become flood-prone in 10 years’ time.
“The long-term vision is that the platform is multi-purpose,” Cavanaugh said. “I think hospitality is a huge and underserved market for this particular application. So I think there’s a lot of juice to squeeze in the near term in hospitality. Long-term, who knows?”
For now, Cavanaugh is focused on travel. Sensible Weather has raised $22.24 million in total funding from a handful of Los Angeles-based firms like Wonder Ventures and 75 & Sunny Ventures.
