A weather site, on purpose.

The story

We launched in 2003 pulling raw National Weather Service feeds through a service called HAMweather. HAMweather was acquired and rebranded twice — first as AerisWeather in 2016, then as Vaisala Xweather in 2024 — and somewhere along that journey the free, hobbyist tier we relied on disappeared.

So in 2026 we rebuilt the site from scratch. Same domain, same promise, modernized stack. We now pull data directly from the National Weather Service's public API — no middleman, no API key, no marketing layer. Government meteorologists do the forecasting; we just deliver it to you, fast.

What we do differently

• Speed first. The page renders with your weather already filled in — no spinner, no "detecting location" delay. We use Netlify's edge geo-headers to know your approximate region before your browser asks.
• No fluff by default. Current temp, today's outlook, 12 hours ahead, 7 days. Everything else is one click away. If you like more on the page, hit "Detailed" — we'll remember.
• Alerts that actually alert. Active NWS warnings appear at the top of the page, color-coded by severity. Most weather sites bury alerts behind ads. We don't.
• Data sources we trust. National Weather Service for forecasts and alerts, NEXRAD radar via Iowa Environmental Mesonet at Iowa State, Open-Meteo for air quality and short-term precipitation timing, Zippopotam for ZIP-code lookups.

Run by people, in Kansas

The site is run by Scott Henderson out of the Kansas City area. Day job: Solutions Architect. Side gig: stage magic. Hobby project: this weather site, which has somehow outlived three of his other ventures.

Questions, bugs, requests? Email contact@fastweatherforecast.com .