World Meteorological Organization announced the launch of SWIdget in Severe Weather Information Centre

23 July 2010

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced the launch of a new service known as SWIdget on her Severe Weather Information Centre (SWIC) website. Details can be found in the press release issued by WMO at:
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_893_en.html.

SWIdget was developed by the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) on behalf of WMO. It is a software tool/widget for accessing information from the SWIC platform. With this new SWIdget service, local as well as international users can now obtain severe weather warnings issued by participating official weather services on a near real-time basis. Users can select and display automatically on their personal computers weather warnings from different parts of the world. At present, warnings of three weather services, namely: Guam, U.S.A; Hong Kong, China and Macao, China, are available in this beta version of SWIdget. Plans are in hand to include severe weather warnings from more official weather services.

SWIdget can be downloaded from the SWIC website at http://severe.worldweather.org/swidget/swidget.html. Installation guide as well as user guide can also be found on the webpage. After installing SWIdget, users can select region/city/warning according to their preference. A dialogue box will pop up with an audio alarm on the user's personal computer when there is a change of warning status issued by the selected official weather services.

SWIC is a WMO website (http://severe.worldweather.wmo.int/) that integrates and enhances regional weather warning services within an international framework for the reduction of loss of lives and damage. Apart from tropical cyclone information originating from official weather services around the world, the website also provides official observation of severe weather such as heavy rain and thunderstorms. The HKO won the 2009 ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for the Asia and the Pacific)/WMO Typhoon Committee's Dr Roman L Kintanar Award for the development and operation of SWIC.

SWIdget can be downloaded (http://severe.worldweather.org/swidget/swidget.html)
from the Severe Weather Information Centre (SWIC) website

Samples of dialogue boxes showing latest status of selected local warnings in different regions