Weather can pack a wallop for businesses. How to best plan for the worst: • Listen to warnings. In February 2008, AccuWeather gave construction machinery firm Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) 22 minutes' warning that a tornado was headed for its manufacturing plant in Oxford, Miss. While no other weather agency was sounding the alarm, the plant's 80 employees rushed to emergency shelters, and all survived. The facility was severely damaged. Precision matters when lives and livelihoods are at stake. "Weather was the first area that used Big Data. AccuWeather has been at the forefront of that for 53 years," said Joel Myers, president of the forecasting firm. • Be prepared. Nearly half of the Fortune 500 use AccuWeather "to reduce risk and help them operate more efficiently," Myers told IBD. "They're using the weather forecast to avoid losses, to plan around severe weather and to mitigate risks." It is possible to overreact. The National... More