I used to work in the Notional Weather Center in Norman, OK. I assure you, you're not the only one who's worked on this, or had the idea :)
Having worked on projects with granular geo and weather data before, make sure you validate your monetezation strategy with this early and often. You'd be surprised at how little big weather firms and "typical" weather data users don't care about the specificity and accuracy you provide. But, you'd also be surprised that there's a lot of valuable niches for weather data that you wouldn't normally pursue.
Specifically, I'm collecting barometer readings from Android devices - I currently receive about 10,000 measurements per day. I've been planning on monitizing by providing better short-term prediction using nowcasting techniques with radar imagery combined with the barometer network.
This seems like it could work to me, as there are other startups working on the nowcasting idea (Dark Sky, for one) and I haven't found anyone with a similar custom-built barometer network yet.
Does this sound like a plausible strategy to you? I've had only minimal advice from meteorologists/atmospheric scientists (though I'm starting to make some contacts) so I'd appreciate any advice you can give.
Sounds pretty cool, actually. You may want to reach out to specialized/boutique weather data firms and broker a supplier deal. There are larger weather companies out there that would love to aggregate your stuff to improve their current offerings (kind of a whole being greater than the sum of the parts model). I wouldn't try to go strike a deal with, say, power companies or insurers or whomever the end user may be. By itself, your data may not be very valuable, and these larger companies likely already own the relationships that would take you a long time to forge.
But, if any when you are sitting down with these companies, be smart in the contract signings. I know a few meteorologists who got their early cash flow from supplying data, but they negotiated a bad contract and it was a rough experience. I've also heard some stories of great relationships that led to exits, so each company is different.
Having worked on projects with granular geo and weather data before, make sure you validate your monetezation strategy with this early and often. You'd be surprised at how little big weather firms and "typical" weather data users don't care about the specificity and accuracy you provide. But, you'd also be surprised that there's a lot of valuable niches for weather data that you wouldn't normally pursue.