Predicting Hurricanes Years in Advance: Solar Forecasting as Capital Strategy | Katherine Monson

Katherine Monson, CEO and co-founder of Hale SWx, joins The Deal Table to explain how her company is building the gold standard for space weather forecasting—predicting solar radiation to protect satellite constellations, commercial aviation, GPS-reliant agriculture, and even futures markets.

The conversation dives deep into the science behind Hale SWx: how co-founder Scott McIntosh discovered the fundamental electromagnetic forces driving solar cycles, why that breakthrough was published in Nature, and how it enables forecasts that are 15% more accurate than NOAA in the short range and maintain a 0.8 skill score years into the future. Katherine explains how SpaceX lost 100 satellites—roughly $500 million—in a single solar storm, and why most operators have simply been shrugging at the sun until now.

Beyond space, the applications are staggering: predicting hurricane seasons months in advance, forecasting LNG demand years out for commodities trading, optimizing airline maintenance schedules based on radiation exposure, and helping precision agriculture avoid GPS disruptions. Katherine also shares her negotiation philosophy from working with the Harvard 'Getting to Yes' team at Vantage Partners, her time as a fellow at the Pentagon, and why she likes building businesses where one bad decision means game over.

The episode closes with a discussion of Hale SWx's SaaS business model, their search for a quantitative hedge fund partner, and Lane's bold prediction that the company has billion-dollar potential.