About Freese Notis

Freese-Notis Weather, Inc. was founded by Harvey Freese and Charlie Notis on May 1, 1973. Harvey and Charlie had just received their MS degrees in meteorology from Iowa State University and were seeking employment. At the time, both the private and government job market in meteorology looked very grim. Therefore, Charlie and Harvey decided to try and start their own company. The name of the company was a natural for a weather company with their appropriate last names. The only “problem” (if you want to call it that) with the name was that during the first couple years of existence, some of the radio listeners during the summer months would get a little confused when the radio announcer would introduce the Freese-Notis forecast that some thought was a “freeze-notice” forecast. How was that possible in the middle of July? Actually, it turned out to be a perfect name for recognition and uniqueness.

The first client of the fledgling company was Iowa Power and Light Company, a utility located in central Iowa on May 1, 1973. That was the beginning of Freese-Notis Weather. A few months later, Freese-Notis had its first radio station as a client. During the Winter of 1973-74 several highway departments (cities, counties, and state) became clients as well. A few paving construction companies also became clients during 1974. Gradually, the company grew to have about 50-75 clients by the late 1970s. All of the clients during these years were either radio stations, construction, utilities, highway departments, and some weather related court cases. By 1979-80, Freese-Notis picked up its first commodity type client. This portion of the business grew rapidly in the late 1980s.

A subsidiary company called Weather Trades, Inc. was founded in 1986 in order to provide trading advice to those customers who wish to get such advice based on weather and crop conditions all over the world. Weather Trades also publishes a monthly Newsletter called “Trade Winds” and has a hotline and fax service available.

During the 1990s the energy industry became increasingly aware of Freese-Notis. Many of the largest Natural Gas and Electricity companies are now customers of Freese-Notis. A few of these companies include: Dynegy, Koch, British Petroleum, Williams Energy, AEP, etc, etc. Even though many of these companies employ their own meteorological staff, they value the opinion of Freese-Notis sufficiently to remain happy subscribers. In the final analysis, markets closely follow what Freese-Notis forecasts. The daily reports projecting the weather out to 2 weeks are prepared by Charlie Notis and Dan Hicks while the monthly and seasonal long range studies are prepared by Craig Solberg. Freese-Notis presently has more than a thousand agricultural and energy related customers.

Late in 1994, Freese-Notis developed an innovative method of delivering its weather and commodity products through the Internet. This strategic major investment has made Freese-Notis a leader on the information super-highway. Our domain name on the Internet has been designated as WEATHER.NET to illustrate our award winning unique type of business capabilities. Currently we offer advanced Internet connectivity in the Midwest with value added 56K through T1 based circuits. There is only one real WEATHER.NET in the entire world. We built it upon the same service ideals that have made our weather services shine.