Based in Belpre, OH, Belpark Weather Network, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, operators of such services as Ohio News and Weather and Mid-Ohio Valley Weather Update, provides weather, emergency information, and education to an audience of over 225,000 followers every day. Belpark’s position as a non-profit allows the organization to be a responsible and responsive member of the weather community, putting people first: Weathering Through. Together. ℠
Ohio News and Weather (ONW) was started on April 7, 2011 with the mindset of keeping Columbus and surrounding areas ahead of the weather. It continued to grow and by 2015, all of Ohio and several counties in Indiana and West Virginia were a part of our coverage area. Our trademark is weather, but we will post news items that matter to you on occasion. This may include breaking news, national news, sports, or anything we feel like posting. We welcome fans from all over, no matter where you live and hopefully you will find our forecasts to be very accurate and our coverage of severe weather to be unmatched!
We love sharing viewer photos of clouds, sun, rain, snow, or thunderstorms. You can post directly to our timeline, comment on a post, or even send us a message! We love to interact with all of you on a daily basis, so please send us your pictures often and you may see them featured on Facebook!
We cover all 88 counties in Ohio, 20 counties in Indiana, and 16 counties in West Virginia. Why so large? We want to keep you ahead of weather, giving you plenty of lead time to prepare for what’s to come. Also, this allows us to partner with MOVWU to assist them with covering severe weather, or just helping with daily operations.
Nick Dunn started this page in 2011 while in high school as a weather enthusiast based in Columbus, OH.
That’s right, Nick Dunn is not a meteorologist. You may automatically think Nick is just another person who tries to fear everyone. In fact, Nick has attended several spotter training sessions, studied extensive model data, and studied how weather affects us. Nick also has spent countless hours understanding precipitation types, radar, and all kinds of storms to get an understanding of how to relay the best forecasts to you.
Mid-Ohio Valley Weather Update (MOVWU) was started on June 1, 2013 with the goal of providing timely and accurate weather updates and public safety information on social media to the immediate Parkersburg-Marietta area and surrounding counties. We now cover 29 counties in Ohio and West Virginia.
We extensively cover severe and winter weather events without the hype that you may find with other services. While 95 to 98 percent of what we do here is weather, there are other things we cover from time to time, in no particular order:
We attempt each and every day to provide a service for the community through providing pertinent and timely local, public safety, and disaster preparation updates. MOVWU also tries to fill in some of the gaps that traditional media misses. As we are not a full service news agency, we cannot and do not get it all. We are an all-volunteer service that keeps you in mind in everything we do.
Facebook algorithm restrictions can make it tough to get all of our updates. Here’s how to take some control back from the algorithm:
We are a full-time exercise in community-based journalism. If you have observations, pictures, or videos, we always encourage you to send them in. Many, if not most, of these items are shared with our friends on our social media pages. Time and again, the one thing people say makes MOVWU different from other local and regional services is that they appreciate and can use the contributions of their fellow community members.
You can contribute to us in many ways! For starters, there’s this page. Unlike some pages in our Coverage Area, we encourage you to post directly to our timeline, post as a comment, or send us a direct message! Our email is movweather@gmail.com. Or, alternatively, you can contact us on the contact page of this site.
If you have a question, comment, compliment, or complaint about our service, you can use any of those means to do that. We take your feedback seriously.
And don’t worry if you have a criticism. We have an open door policy here at MOVWU. We will listen to your concerns and respectfully reply. You may not always like our answers but we will not belittle you or your concerns. We want to earn and keep your trust.
MOVWU started on June 1, 2013 after our founder provided winter weather updates to friends, family, and co-workers. Not satisfied with the lack of an effective social media weather service in his television market, he started MOVWU by covering Athens and Washington Counties in Ohio and Pleasants and Wood Counties in West Virginia (the Parkersburg television market plus Athens County). The service has grown to include 25 other counties in the region, many of which have been traditionally underrepresented in mainstream media.
We cover 15 counties in Ohio: Athens, Belmont, Gallia, Guernsey, Hocking, Jackson, Lawrence, Meigs, Monroe, Morgan, Muskingum, Noble, Perry, Vinton, and Washington.
We cover 14 counties in West Virginia: Calhoun, Doddridge, Gilmer, Jackson, Marshall, Mason, Ohio, Pleasants, Ritchie, Roane, Tyler, Wetzel, Wirt, and Wood.
Our founder/editor is local lifelong weather enthusiast and Belpre, OH resident, Ken McNatt
Correct. Ken’s formal training in meteorology is limited to one college level course in meteorology and several SKYWARN classes offered by the National Weather Service. Ken is SKYWARN Advanced Certified. That said, Ken is knowledgeable at reading radar beyond the precipitation level, reads models, creates custom snowfall forecasts, and uses his knowledge of local climate to provide the best possible information he can to all of you!
This is not a typical enthusiast site. Ken holds a Masters in Mass Media Arts and Journalism from Clarion University of Pennsylvania (2013). This alone makes him as qualified as the non-meteorologist television personalities you may see present weather. He treats this page as an exercise in journalism and holds the service to a high standard of journalistic ethics.