FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Prelay grades each upcoming day at each job site for the specific work planned there, so roofers, landscapers and other outdoor businesses can make the go/no-go call before trucks roll.

DUBLIN, Ohio, Nov. 2, 2026 — Local Weather News Network (LWNN) today launched Prelay, a weather decision service that helps outdoor contractors plan work around weather conditions. Prelay evaluates rain, wind, heat, cold, ice and ground wetness at individual job sites, providing morning and afternoon assessments tailored to the work scheduled there. Conditions are graded Good, Marginal, Poor or Unsuitable. The service is available now for self-service sign-up, with an initial focus on roofing and landscaping contractors.

Built Around the Work, Not Just the Forecast

A generic forecast says it might rain. It doesn't say whether the ground will be too wet for equipment, whether gusts are likely to exceed the limit for a roof tear-off, or whether overnight temperatures will be too cold to pour concrete. Prelay grades the weather for 62 work activities across 12 trades, day by day, at each job site.

Prelay also estimates ground conditions, which a forecast alone can't show. A clear day tomorrow doesn't mean a site will be dry enough to work after a week of rain. Prelay's custom ground model combines recent weather, including rainfall estimates derived from NOAA radar and rain-gauge observations, with evaporation and modeled soil moisture to estimate how wet each site's ground is now. It then projects the next seven days so contractors can see whether a site is drying out or getting wetter.

Every grade below Good comes with the reasons behind it. For wind and rain, Prelay uses a 31-member weather forecast ensemble to estimate the probability that conditions will exceed an activity's limits during working hours. Customers can adjust wind limits, risk tolerance and working hours within set guardrails. When essential weather data is unavailable, Prelay marks the assessment as Limited rather than assuming conditions are favorable.

Customers can also set up "prelays," alerts that fire once when a condition turns true, such as ground dry enough to work, rain-then-shine, first-frost lead time or a heat streak. Grades and alerts arrive by email, through signed webhooks to the customer's own systems, in scheduled site reports or in a team portal.

"Every morning, someone at a roofing or landscaping company stands in the yard and decides whether to send crews out, usually on a gut read of a phone forecast," said Matt Simmons, founder and president of LWNN. "A wrong call either way costs real money: a crew gets sent home, a job gets rained out, materials get ruined. Prelay gives that person a clear grade for the exact work on the schedule, the reasons behind it, and a warning when it changes. That's the same discipline we brought to critical systems in aerospace, applied to the weather decisions small businesses make every day."

Prelay is built on the forecasting and data work behind LWNN's local weather coverage for smaller markets and news deserts, communities that no longer have a local meteorologist.

Availability

Prelay is available now. Initial focus is roofing and landscaping contractors. Prelay also supports site prep and excavation, concrete and masonry, paving, exterior painting, tree care, utility, solar and electrical, and HVAC contractors, as well as car washes, golf courses, event venues, tire retailers and orchards. Pricing is a flat monthly subscription based on the number of sites monitored. Organizations monitoring large numbers of sites can contact info@lwnn.news for volume pricing.

Businesses can sign up and start monitoring their sites immediately at https://prelay.lwnn.news.

About Local Weather News Network

Local Weather News Network (LWNN) provides local weather coverage for smaller markets and news deserts, communities without a local meteorologist. LWNN runs free local weather channels for underserved cities, supplies weather content to community newsrooms and news platforms, and builds custom weather data and video for nonprofits and government agencies. Learn more at https://lwnn.org.