Stephen Bennett, Weather Seer

A month before a late July heat wave sent temperatures as high as 108F in Newark, N.J., Stephen Bennett saw it coming. He was watching high pressure far above Canada’s Hudson Bay, strong jet stream winds over northern Europe, and a low bubble of hot air in the upper Midwest. They’re among the signals that historically precede extreme heat in the Northeast.

While typical forecasts use computer models to simulate the weather a week or two out, Bennett draws on 60 years of weather data to identify conditions that could lead to big temperature swings weeks later. The weather events in advance of a hot or cold stretch are like “a series of dominoes that start to fall over,” says Bennett, founder and chief scientist at EarthRisk Technologies. The year-old startup makes software that tries to predict the probability of each domino falling and sells it to energy companies that want to lock in fuel prices before periods of peak demand.