The weather media in the United States includes coverage of weather and weather forecasting by farmers' almanacs, newspapers, radio, television stations, and the internet. Farmers' Almanacs have taken a stab at forecasting for the following year or so for around two centuries. At first, weather media included reporting on past events, with forecasting playing a role from the late 19th century onward. Weather-related information proliferated to near real-time after the invention of the telegraph. Radio and satellite broadcasts made weather-related communication ever quicker, with the World Wide Web making broadcasting and reporting nearly instantaneous.
By the 1990s, sensationalism played a role in large weather coverage. Hyping weather, especially winter weather, has become a major marketing tool in media. It is common for media in the United States to hype cold temperatures that are just a few degrees colder than normal for any region. Hyping cold in the resort and sunbelt areas of the United States is also common, with the media flying in reporters to cover the weather in Florida or southern California when temperatures below 50 F (10 C) are expected. Dry weather in the southwestern United States is often hyped during long periods of dry weather.
One of the biggest angles of weather sensationalism in the United States is the hype of snow (or the threat of snow) in the heavily populated I-95 corridor from Richmond, Virginia to the Tri-state area (New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut). Some scientists have noted that in a region that climatologically has a brief winter and sees infrequent snow ( most cities between Richmond, Virginia and New York City average less than 30 inches of snow annually), there is a non-stop hype of winter weather from late November through March. In contrast, other areas of the United States that average several hundred inches of snow annually (areas in the Great Lakes, Mountain West, upper Midwest), and West Coast receive little coverage. The Weather Channel will often dispatch several "weather reporters" to the I-95 cities to dramatically report that a few inches of snow has fallen.
Farmers' almanacs
Farmers' Almanacs have published long-term forecasts for around 200 years. While almanac publishers have attributed an 80 to 85 percent accuracy rate to the publication's annual forecasts, independent studies that retrospectively compare the weather with the predictions have not shown them more accurate than chance. Predictions for each edition are made as far as two years in advance. The Farmers’ Almanac publishers are highly secretive about the method used to make its predictions, only stating publicly that it is a "top secret mathematical and astronomical formula, that relies on sunspot activity, tidal action, planetary position and many other factors." (The use of planetary position or astrology to forecast weather dates back to Ptolemy's work in the second century of the Common Era, and it was thus an outgrowth of the almanacs' other main purpose to provide the positions of celestial bodies. Like other forms of astrology, the scientific community considers it a discredited pseudoscience.)
Newspapers
Newspapers, early in their history, reported on current and past weather events. Prior to the telegraph, distant weather reports travelled around 100 miles per day (160 km/d), though it was more typically 40–75 miles per day (60–120 km/day) (whether by land or by sea). By the late 1840s, the telegraph allowed reports of weather conditions from a wide area to be received almost instantaneously, allowing forecasts to be made from knowledge of weather conditions further upwind. This led to United States government involvement in the weather enterprise.
The 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania demonstrated that daily weather map transmission via telegraph could be accomplished. The New York Daily Graphic published weather maps from mid-1879 through the summer of 1882. By 1894, there were four daily newspapers publishing weather maps in Boston, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and San Francisco. An increasing amount of newspapers published weather maps over the following years, before the fad passed in 1912. While the number of newspapers carrying weather maps decreased beyond 1912, many continued publishing them until interest in flight increased interest in the maps once more in the 1930s.