The Michigan storm chasing team with 900k followers moved tipping into their own weather app
What it is A weather app serving only Michigan, made by a local storm chasing team: warnings, their own weather updates, radar, user reports and livestreams. Free with ads, plus three subscription tiers.
Why it took off The team has nearly 900k followers on Facebook and 1,100 multiple Patreon paying members. They drove fans and long-time members into App subscriptions through their own posts and livestreams. The US Play weather grossing chart has a low bar: a few hundred paying users can reach the top 30.
CHow you could follow Don't build a local weather app without an audience. What's worth doing is the Instant Weather side: turn a mature weather app into a rebrandable template, and find weather accounts in each state that already have paying members to split revenue with.
- Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-07-13 · 11-07 installs 14,365
Android · Total installs worldwide Data 2026-10-30 → 2026-11-07 (9 days, 9 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.Android · Ratings count (cumulative) Data 2026-10-30 → 2026-11-07 (9 days, 9 observations)
A Michigan storm chasing team with nearly 900k Facebook followers launched their own weather app this July. It has only 14k installs on Google Play, yet it has charted between #22 and #30 on the US weather grossing chart. The features aren't new: the whole app is a Canadian weather company's codebase with a different brand on top. What sells is the trust this group built up in Michigan. Following this path, the hard part isn't building the app, it's first having that fan base.
"Apple users, go ahead and download"
Jul 2026 22 at 11:30 PM, Michigan Storm Chasers (MSC for short) posted a "special announcement" on their Facebook page: the app is live, but only on Apple. "Google is painfully slow, it's been under review for 9 days," so Android users will have to wait. Then one more line: "We expect a huge wave of downloads that could crash our servers, so launching one platform at a time is actually safer."
The post got 5,800 reactions, 890 comments and 352 shares (Facebook, 11-06). The second half of the announcement was more direct: members-only forecasts will later move into the app's Pro subscription, "so you can cancel your Patreon / Facebook subscriptions then."
Within an hour, Instant Weather Ontario, a weather account in Ontario, Canada, reposted the announcement with the caption: "This is why their app looks so much like ours."
What it is
A weather app serving only Michigan: government warnings, severe weather updates posted by MSC, 15-day forecasts, radar, and "Report-it," where users can photograph hail, lightning or funnel clouds in the app and submit them with location and direction. In October they added watching MSC livestreams inside the app.
Free with ads, with three subscription tiers: Upgrade to remove ads, Extended with 48 hours of future radar, and MSC Pro ($7.99/month or $79.99 per year). In-app purchases on Play range from $1.49 to $79.99.
The package name is ca.instantweather.mscapp, sharing the same prefix as Instant Weather's own app. The Pro tier's selling points, "first Canadian storm relative velocity radar" and "fastest Canadian raw radar," come straight from Instant Weather, and Michigan users can barely use them. Instant Weather calls this a "partnership": both sides share resources and develop together, and it also gets to use MSC's Michigan weather cameras and storm reports, since many weather systems pass through Michigan before reaching Ontario. How the revenue split works hasn't been disclosed.
Curve: nearly all installs came in the first six weeks after launch
| Date | Play cumulative installs | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 7-22 | iOS first, 5,800 reactions to the announcement | |
| Around 7-30 | Launched | "Now available on both stores" video, 142k views |
| 8-11 | About 1,400 | |
| 9-09 | About 8,500 | 9-02/03 Southeast Michigan severe storms, Detroit tornado |
| 9-10 | About +3,600 in a single day | Cause not found |
| 9-16 | About 12,500 | |
| 11-06 | 14,365 | +165 in the last 7 days, twenty to thirty a day |
Source: before November, third-party estimates; after that, Google Play's public install counts.
Installs were concentrated in the six or seven weeks after launch, following MSC's posts and the late-summer severe storms. We found no ad buys, creator partnerships, or media coverage specifically about this app. Since October, only a few dozen new installs a day come in, so it's no longer acquiring users. It's collecting subscriptions from existing fans.
Where the users come from: a team founded only 2022 years ago
Founded in 2022, but they only blew up in 2023 Aug 24: that day Michigan had 7 tornadoes and they livestreamed the whole chase. By 2025 August, Michigan State University's public media outlet WKAR reported that "nearly 500k people were getting their forecasts from this Facebook group." Now the homepage has 898k followers, YouTube 125k subscribers, TikTok 54k fans, and they claim 1.1M across all platforms.
The app wasn't a whim either. In June 7, 2025, MSC posted "Like this post if you think we should have an app," and got 6,800 reactions. Among the people who liked it was Instant Weather founder Adam Skinner. The app launched a year later.
All the promotion after that came from their own accounts: 7-30 launch videos for both platforms; 8-08 sharing lightning photos users took with Report-it, adding the tip "if you can't find it, search MI Storm Chasers"; in October, promoting "watch livestreams in the app"; and 10-15 another post called "MSC in your pocket." During severe weather days, MSC streamed simultaneously on Facebook, YouTube, X, TikTok and Twitch, with hosts plugging the app on air.
The App Store reviews show who these users are: "I've followed them on Facebook for a long time, they're always ahead of the TV warnings" (8-13); "When the tornado came, they practically told us it would hit the next street over" (8-16); "This is my only weather app, I follow MSC online" (8-26). There are negative reviews too: radar not showing, temperatures 8 degrees off, "not as good as other free apps, but I want to support them" (8-11).
Why 14k installs was enough to chart
Two reasons.
First, the people paying were already paying. MSC supported itself through Patreon (1,156 paying members), Facebook subscriptions, donations, merchandise and local business sponsorships. 7-22 The announcement explicitly said member content would move into Pro, meaning part of the App subscription revenue is long-time members switching where they pay. The motivation in the reviews also looks more like tipping a host, "thank you for making this app real" and "thanks for all your hard work," rather than buying a radar product. On Play, 694 ratings represent about 4.8% of installs, roughly 5 times the typical app; iOS has 796 ratings at 4.9 stars. That looks like die-hard fans.
Second, the chart bar is low. In November 6, WeatherCal, ranked #13 on the US Play weather grossing chart, had only 13k installs; WeatherFront, at #24, had 58k. At $7.99 per month for Pro, a few hundred paying users is enough to reach the top 30. Based on Patreon-scale numbers, a rough estimate puts monthly revenue at a few thousand to $10–20K (estimate, no public figures).
Who else is doing the same thing
"Local weather influencer + their own app" wasn't invented by MSC. The US already has several precedents:
| Product | Launched | Scale | How it differs from MSC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas Storm Chasers | iOS 2016 | 9,241 App Store ratings, 4.8 stars; 1.4M Facebook followers | An elder of the same model: free with ads, paid to remove ads, no tiered subscriptions |
| WeatherWise (partnered with Ryan Hall, Y'all) | 2024-09 | 595k installs on Play, #6 US weather grossing | National version: a big YouTube weather account plus a third-party radar app |
| Illinois Storm Chasers | 2023-05 | 23k installs and 64 ratings on Play, not on the grossing chart | A same-category app in a neighboring state, a community an order of magnitude smaller, hasn't grown in three years |
| Instant Weather | Play 2024-01 | 181k installs on Play, #5 Canada weather grossing | The technical source for MSC, serving Ontario |
| Storm Team 8(WOOD TV8) | 2014 | 330 iOS ratings | A free app from a West Michigan TV station, with a livestream partnership with MSC |
| RadarScope / RadarOmega | Long-established | 289k / 129k on Play, grossing #7 / #12 | Sells professional radar to storm chasers, not to locals |
Sources: Google Play public data, App Store, 11-06.
Illinois Storm Chasers is the best counterexample: same name, same kind of app, yet after three years it has only 23k installs and has never charted. An app alone isn't enough. The community has to be big enough, and the subscriptions have to catch the existing payers.
If it were you
C: the model is easy to understand, but the thing that drives traction is out of your reach. MSC took off because of 900k local fans and over a thousand members who were already paying. The app is just the place where the money gets collected. Without those people, the same app is Illinois Storm Chasers. Texas and the national slot were both taken long ago.
Who it suits: two kinds of people. One is someone who already runs a regional or vertical community (local weather accounts, fishing, hunting, skiing, aurora chasing, or other hobbies that depend on the weather), with Patreon or Facebook subscription income, who wants to move it into an app. The other is a developer with a mature weather app who wants to do B2B: follow Instant Weather's lead and sell the same app, re-skinned, to state-level weather accounts.
Who it doesn't suit: people with no audience who want to build a local weather app and rely on store search or paid acquisition. MSC's free chart rank only sits between #150 and #190, and the store sends very little organic traffic. In local weather, users follow people, not features.
How to do it: if you build the underlying product, package radar, warnings, tiered subscriptions, user reports and livestream embedding into a re-skinnable template. Then find state-level weather Facebook pages and YouTube channels with over 100k followers and existing paying members (MSC's sister Indiana chapter from the same team has no app yet, a ready next target). Negotiate revenue sharing: you provide the product, they provide content and users. If you're the one with a community, don't write the code yourself. Find a platform like this, post to ask your fans whether they want it, build only once the response is strong enough, and at launch put member-only content directly in the top subscription tier.
How they get users: pure community. Their own posts and live-stream callouts. They pre-hyped it a week ahead, announced it on launch day, and kept pushing it in live streams during bad-weather days. For the platform layer, the customers are the dozens of state-level weather accounts, negotiated one by one over DMs.
When to move: no hard deadline. Each state has only one or two top weather accounts, so whoever signs them first owns the slot. Launching before the spring severe-weather season of 2027 means catching a full season of new users.
Signs you read it wrong: (1) No severe weather in winter, MSC drops out of the US Play weather Top Grossing top 50, and doesn't recover next spring. That would mean a one-off harvest of existing fans, not a recurring subscription business. (2) Conversely, if Instant Weather ships rebranded apps for two or three more US state-level weather accounts within half a year, and they chart on Top Grossing, the platform path has proven itself and is worth following closely.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one WeatherWise.app(Ryan Hall, Y'all) Android 2024-09 Play 595k installs, US weather Top Grossing #6 Same model, nationwide version: weather celebrity + third-party radar app. MSC is the single-state, more local version. Instant Weather Android Play 2024-01(iOS 2020) 181k installs on Play, #5 Canada weather grossing MSC's technical parent, serving Canada. MSC just rebrands it and adds local content. Illinois Storm Chasers Android 2023-05 Play 23k installs, 64 rating; iOS 22 rating; not charting A neighboring state's weather-celebrity app. Community about one order of magnitude smaller, no proper subscription tiers, hasn't taken off in three years. Storm Team 8 – WOODTV8 Weather iOS 2014 iOS 330 ratings A free West Michigan TV station app, no subscription. MSC and Storm Team 8 have live-stream partnerships. Ohio News & Weather(Belpark) Other 2023 Not in our database The Ohio version of the MSC partner-station app, same model, mostly free. RadarOmega / RadarScope Android 2018 / earlier Play 129k / 289k installs, weather Top Grossing #12 / #7 Sells professional radar tools to storm chasers. Does not sell community or local personalities. The Weather Channel / AccuWeather / MyRadar Big-company features Long-established Hundreds of millions of installs Nationwide, no local presenters or community - Where users come from
- Verified Own-community traffic (Facebook page with 898k followers): 2025-06-07 "should we have an app" poll post with 6.8K reactions; 2026-07-22 iOS announced first; 7-30 launch video on both platforms with 142k views; 8-08, 10-15 kept posting to push the app.
- Inferred Live-stream callouts (YouTube 125k subscribers / TikTok 54k / X / Twitch simulcast): simulcast across all platforms on bad-weather days, with the app mentioned throughout. October added in-app live viewing and ran live tests. The early-September severe weather week lines up with the install spike.
- Verified Migrating existing paying users (Patreon 1,156 paying members): 7-22 announcement: members-only forecasts will move into the Pro subscription, and members can then cancel their Patreon / FB subscriptions.
- Verified Store search (brand terms): posts told users to search "Michigan Storm Chasers / MI Storm Chasers". The Play weather free chart sat at #151–194, so organic discovery was minimal.
- Inferred Paid acquisition: no evidence of any ad buys found. The install curve tracks their posts and weather events.
Why Michigan Storm Chasers (ca.instantweather.mscapp) took off
Channel: Google Play (iOS version also available) | Research date 2026-11-06 | Data: our googleplay / appstore databases + web (Jina) + TikHub + x-radar
Bottom line
This isn't an app that won on product or paid acquisition. It's a Michigan local weather celebrity team with roughly 1.1M social followers (Michigan Storm Chasers, MSC) moving its fans into its own subscription app. The technology is Canadian Instant Weather's ready-made weather app platform (package names are literally ca.instantweather.*). MSC just rebrands it and supplies content: its own warnings, live streams, and local reports. It reached the US Play weather Top Grossing top 30 at 14k installs because its users are die-hard fans with high willingness to pay, and the US Play weather Top Grossing bar is low.
1. What it is
- A Michigan local weather app: government warnings + MSC's own "MSC Updates" severe-weather alerts + 15-day forecasts + radar + "Report-it" user reports (photos/video in the app, with compass, location, and timestamp). Since October, you can watch MSC's live streams inside the app.
- Free with ads. Three subscription tiers: Upgrade (no ads, 12-hour future radar), Extended (48-hour future radar, minute-level forecasts), and MSC Pro (professional radar suite, StormRisk, Canadian SRV / storm tracks, etc.). Play in-app purchase range $1.49–$79.99 (googleplay database); the iOS listing is the same.
- Developer: Michigan Storm Chasers, L.L.C. (Edwardsburg, MI). Package name
ca.instantweather.mscapp, sharing a prefix with Instant Weather's main appca.instantweather.instantweather(googleplay database). The Pro tier's selling points, "First ever Canadian SRV / storm tracks / fastest raw Canadian radar", are lifted straight from Instant Weather's App Store page. Michigan users barely need Canadian radar, which shows the whole platform was rebranded as-is.
2. Data
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Play cumulative installs | 14,365(11-06) | googleplay library |
| Play installs in the last 7 days | +165 (about 20–25/day) | googleplay library |
| Play ratings count | 694 (rating/installs ≈ 4.8%, far above the typical ~1%) | googleplay library |
| Play US weather Top Grossing | Starting at 10-31, ranged #22–#30; weather Top Free #151–#194 | googleplay chart_rank |
| iOS ratings | 796 ratings, 4.9 average (only up 2 ratings since 10-28) | appstore database / App Store page |
| iOS US weather Top Grossing | 51 (10-28) → fluctuating between #72–#127; Top Free #76–#193 | appstore chart_rank |
| Only in 1 country (US) | googleplay library |
Install curve (AppstoreSpy estimate, googleplay app_day_ext):
- iOS launched first 7-20 (first day in the appstore database). MSC posted "iOS first, Google's review has been pending 9 days" on 7-22. Play went live around 7-29/30. On 7-30, MSC posted a video, "now available on both stores" (Facebook, 142k views).
- 8-11 about 1,400 → 8-20 about 5,900 → 9-09 about 8,500 → 9-10 single-day about +3,600 → 9-16 about 12,500 → after October, only 20–90 per day.
- In short: nearly all installs came in the 6–7 weeks after launch, driven by a few community pushes and late-summer severe weather (9-02/03 southeast Michigan severe storms and a Detroit-area tornado, with an NWS DTX special page). The cause of the 9-10 spike is unverified (possibly another full push to fans or a weather event). After that it settled into a steady state. It's no longer growing. It's harvesting payments from the existing fan base.
3. Why it took off
Why users come, and from where
- An owned big-account community, traffic at zero cost. MSC was founded in 2022. Its Facebook page has 898k followers (FB page, 11-06), YouTube 125k subscribers with 12.5M cumulative views, TikTok 54k followers and 330k likes (TikHub), and it claims "1.1M across all social." WKAR (Michigan State University public media) reported that it "gets forecasts from them, with nearly 500k Facebook followers". The breakout moment was a live chase of the 2023-08-24 Michigan 7 tornado (at 2025-08).
- Demand was validated a year before launch. 2025-06-07 posted "Think MSC should have an app" and got 6.8K reactions and 176 comments. Instant Weather's founder Adam Skinner was among the people who liked it, probably where the partnership started. 2026-05 on X / Instagram teased a "June launch".
- The launch rollout was entirely driven by its own posts: 7-22 iOS announced first (deliberately saying it was afraid downloads would crash the servers, to create scarcity). 7-30 launch video on both platforms with 142k views. 8-08 showcased lightning videos submitted through the app (15k views) and told people to search "MI Storm Chasers" if they couldn't find it. October posted a big update for "watch live in the app" and ran live tests. 10-15 then posted "MSC in your pocket". No evidence of ad buys, creator partnerships, or media coverage specifically about the app was found.
- Weather itself was the trigger: on bad-weather days MSC simulcast across all platforms (FB / YouTube / X / TikTok / Twitch) and plugged the app throughout. The early-September severe weather week lines up with the install spike.
Why people would pay
- Moving existing payments into the app: MSC previously relied on Patreon (1,156 paying members, Patreon page), Aurora Patreon, FB subscriptions / Stars, donations, merchandise, and sponsorships (official Get Involved page: "goal is to be self-sustaining within 2025 years"). The 7-22 announcement stated plainly that members-only forecasts would move into the Pro subscription, and "you can then cancel your Patreon / Facebook subscription." So part of the app's subscription revenue is existing paying fans paying in a new place.
- Comments are along the lines of "finally our own app" and "supporting MSC's operations". Users' payment motive is closer to tipping a favorite host than buying radar features. One comment under the 7-30 video: "Downloaded last night, just upgraded to Pro."
- The unusually high rating rate (Play 4.8%, iOS 796 ratings at 4.9 stars) is also a sign of die-hard fans. The Instant Weather platform itself may include rating prompts (unverified).
Why 14k installs was enough to chart
The US Play weather Top Grossing bar is low: #13 on the same chart, WeatherCal, has only 13k installs, and #24 WeatherFront has 58k (googleplay 11-06). MSC Pro at $7.99/month or $79.99/year only needs a few hundred paying users to chart at #20–#30. Rough estimate based on the Patreon 1,156 member base: monthly revenue in the low thousands to $10–20K (rough estimate, unverified).
4. Competitors
| Competitors | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from MSC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WeatherWise.app (Ryan Hall, Y'all collaboration) | Android / iOS | 2024-09 | Play 595k installs, US weather Top Grossing #6, in-app purchases $1.99–$159.99 | Same model, nationwide version: weather celebrity Ryan Hall (big YouTube channel) + a third-party radar app, with a "Y'all Mode". MSC is the single-state version, and the platform isn't under its control. |
| Instant Weather | Android / iOS | Play 2024-01 (earlier iOS 2020) | 181k installs on Play, #5 Canada weather grossing | MSC's technical parent. Covers Canada (Ontario), and the content is warnings from Adam Skinner's team itself. |
| Storm Team 8 – WOODTV8 Weather | iOS / Android | 2014 | iOS 330 ratings | A West Michigan TV station app. Free, no subscription. MSC and Storm Team 8 have live-stream partnerships (per recall). |
| Illinois Storm Chasers | Android / iOS | 2023-05 | Play 23k installs, 64 rating; iOS 22 rating | A neighboring state's weather-celebrity team app (blizapps package name). Three years in, it's still this size and never charted. Having an app isn't enough. You need community scale and a paywall design. |
| Ohio News & Weather (Belpark, MSC's partner station) | iOS / Android | 2023 | Not in our database | The Ohio version of the same model, with a free app for live viewing. MSC's website lists it as an affiliate. |
| RadarOmega / RadarScope | Android / iOS | 2018 / earlier | RadarOmega Play 129k, Weather Top Grossing 12; RadarScope 289k, Top Grossing 7 | Storm chasers' own pro radar tool (MSC uses it too). Sells the tool, not the community. |
| The Weather Channel / AccuWeather / MyRadar | All platforms | Long-established | Hundreds of millions of installs | National coverage, no local personality or community. |
No competitors isn't the problem. The problem is that winning in this category depends not on the app, but on who holds state-level trust and followers.
5. Differentiation
- Against general weather apps: local people. MSC's own warnings, livestreams, chase team, and user reports get used by the hosts on air. That sense of belonging is something a weather channel can't offer.
- Against similar viral storm-chaser apps (Illinois Storm Chasers etc.): the community is an order of magnitude bigger (nearly 900k on FB), and it's built on a mature stack (radar, subscription tiers, ads, and push are all off the shelf), so it launches as a complete product. Subscriptions come in three tiers, directly replacing Patreon.
- Is differentiation why it took off? The product itself isn't different. The audience is. Functionally it's just a reskin of Instant Weather. The real moat is MSC's community and brand. The app just turns existing attention and tips into in-store subscriptions.
6. How many people have seen it
- Revenue isn't public, not on TrustMRR, and on X (x-radar, last 120 days) there were 0 mentions. Media coverage is about the MSC team (WKAR 2025-08, WTOL "Minutes matter"), not the app business.
- But "weather influencer + own app" isn't new: Ryan Hall + WeatherWise is already a public, larger-scale example.
- Bottom line: this specific app is still little known; the model is being passed around in small weather circles.
7. Copycats
No new app modeled on MSC found. Instant Weather currently has only its own package and MSC's on Play (googleplay library, searched by ca.instantweather%), so MSC may be its first white-label client. MSC's own Indiana Storm Chasing Network / Indiana Weather Online / Great Lakes SCN are sister channels from the same team, the most likely next copy targets (no apps seen).
8. What others can learn
- Build a state- or regional-level trust community first, then the app. The app's growth curve follows community pushes and weather events entirely.
- Don't build in-house, find a white-label base: small teams like Instant Weather are willing to license a full weather app to people with an audience, splitting revenue (exact terms unverified). Similarly, look for other local weather pages with followings (other states' storm chasers, large local-weather FB groups).
- Move Patreon / FB subscriptions to in-app subscriptions: put the content (member forecasts, aurora alerts) into Pro, so users go from "tipping" to "subscribing to a tool," which also makes it easier to reach store top-grossing charts.
- Small category charts have a low bar: the US Play Weather top-grossing chart reaches the top 30 with a few hundred paying users, which is friendly to vertical communities.
9. Still unclear
- Revenue split / licensing terms between Instant Weather and MSC; whether MSC pays a development fee.
- Actual paying user count and revenue; whether Patreon members have largely migrated to the app.
- The trigger event behind 9-10's roughly +3,600 installs in a single day.
- The iOS vs Android download split (iOS has slightly more ratings, suggesting over half of users are on iOS).
- Whether subscriptions can hold up through winter without strong convective storms (installs dropped to dozens per day after October).
Sources
- Google Play / App Store data: our googleplay and appstore libraries (2026-10-28 to 11-06), AppstoreSpy history (googleplay.app_day_ext)
- App Store page: apps.apple.com/us/app/michigan-storm-chasers/id6776731085
- WKAR coverage (2025-08-13): www.wkar.org/wkar-news/2025-08-13/how-a-facebook-group-of-50…
- MSC Facebook page (898k followers): www.facebook.com/MIStormChasers/
- 2025-06-07 "Should we get an app" poll post: www.facebook.com/MIStormChasers/posts/if-you-think-michigan-…
- 2026-07-22 iOS launch announcement: www.facebook.com/MIStormChasers/posts/special-announcement-g…
- 2026-07-30 both-platforms launch video (142k views): www.facebook.com/MIStormChasers/posts/the-moment-you-all-and…
- 2026-08-08 Report-it post: www.facebook.com/MIStormChasers/posts/our-michigan-storm-cha…
- 2026-10-15 app promotion post: www.facebook.com/MIStormChasers/posts/michigan-storm-chasers…
- Official support / services pages: michiganstormchasers.com/get-involved/, michiganstormchasers.com/services/
- Patreon (1,156 paying members): www.patreon.com/MichiganStormChasers
- YouTube @MIStormChasers (125k subscribers); TikTok @mistormchasers (TikHub, 54k followers)
- Instant Weather app page: instantweatherinc.com/app; team page instantweatherinc.com/team
- WeatherWise / Ryan Hall: www.weatherwise.app/, ryanhallyall.com/
- NWS DTX 2026-09-02/03 severe weather and Detroit tornado: www.weather.gov/dtx/severeweather0902032026