Stormsell Weather - Celebrating 10 Years!
Welcome to the Stormsell Blog!
This marks a new chapter in the ever evolving timeline of Stormsell Weather. This month marks some important milestones including the 10 year anniversary of the Stormsell website. Today I will look back at how Stormsell Weather has evolved over the years.
The Beginning
It all began in September 2003 with a 10 year old named Bryant and a Hurricane named Isabel. Seeing the category 5 Storm barreling toward the North Carolina coast had me hooked. My family had just been to the Outer Banks for vacation adding to the interest but what really mesmerized me was the size of the storm. Although the maximum sustained winds were only a category 2 at landfall, the storm had grown in size (similar to Erin this year), stretching from the Carolinas to Pennsylvania. Growing up in central PA it was common for school to be closed for a snow day, but a hurricane? How crazy was that! I wanted to know more.
About the same time as Isabel and my first interest in meteorology, my brother was taking web design classes in school and began teaching me what he was learning. We both designed pages for fun as offline sites that we used on our home computer. I had a hurricane page where I listed the hurricanes starting with the 2005 Hurricane Season. At some point I made the realization that you could embed images like weather maps and webcams into web pages. I then created a page called 'The Weather Page.' I'm not exactly sure when this was born, but I have gone back and looked at when some of the files were created. I found that one of the images for The Weather Page was created in 2008! As you can see, it looks oddly familiar to the original Bryant's Weather Wall.
 |
Above: Two versions of the logo for The Weather Page. The first one is from 2008! At left: a screenshot of The Weather Page. Nearly all of the images no longer update. |
Getting Connected
During a web design class my freshman year at Penn State Altoona I learned how to upload a website to my school account. Some time after this, the site went online. At this time I rebranded the site to 'Bryant's Weather Map Wall.' I'm not sure when but around this time the webcams were moved to a separate page. The site was still mainly for personal use, but I could now access the site on the school computers.
 The original logo for Bryant's Weather Map Wall (2014-2022)
| 
The current logo for Bryant's Weather Wall(2022-present) |
The site would stay two pages until my internship at WTAJ with Joe Murgo in the summer of 2014. During this time the site expanded into what Bryant's Weather Wall is today. I believe it was at this point that I dropped 'Map' from the name. I began posting weather content to Twitter in October 2014, allowing for the website to gain public exposure.
A Storm is Born
After graduation from Penn State in May 2015 I had a decision to make as my school account that hosted the site would disappear. What would I call website? I could have used bryantsweatherwall.com but I felt that I could come up with something better. Then a light bulb lit up above my head! I could incorporate my last name into a brand name. I was torn between 'Super Sell' and 'Storm Sell.' I felt Stormsell was a bit more recognizable as a weather reference. On September 13, 2015, the domain 'stormsellweather.com' was purchased. The Stormsell logo was unveiled on August 15, 2019, and a new Stormsell homepage debuted in February 2023.
Bryant's Weather Wall continued to grow in usership and in 2021, the site had surpassed 100,000 page views. Although a large portion of these hits were from me, there had been site visits from all 50 states and over 50 countries. I had known for some time that the site needed a redesign. I began the revamp in 2020 which was unveiled in September 2022. The new design got rid of the ugly, but nostalgic red, while keeping the charm of the original design going back to the original The Weather Page.
A primitive Stormsell Weather Homepage in March 2016
Originally the Stormsell website was just the home for Bryant's Weather Wall but I knew it would provide a platform for future expansion. That thought paid off as the site now hosts Pennsylvania weather statistics from weather extremes to tornadoes. I've also added a section to share my photography. There is plenty of room for future features!
Looking Ahead
What can you expect from the new blog? I will be posting monthly weather reviews recapping the important weather events from each month in Pennsylvania. In fact, this isn't the first blog post as I have already recapped the weather from August 2025! When warranted, I may post summaries of individual events, too. I will also post about the year in review in late December/early January. These posts are guaranteed to be jam packed of fun weather statistics!
Additionally, I also will be using this platform to highlight important past weather events that have impacted Pennsylvania. I am excited that I will now be able to go further in detail about weather history. Be on the lookout for a weather event post later in September!
To follow along with future posts, I will post to Bluesky when new posts are up or you can receive the blog as a newsletter in your inbox by signing up here.
Thanks for reading, and remember to always look up!
Comments
Post a Comment