Whether you're a farmer wondering if it will rain tomorrow, a surfer wondering what the waves are like in the north-west, or just wondering how your friends abroad are faring, you'll find a relevant weather page on the Web. From average rainfall statistics for Dublin to the current wave height in the mid-Atlantic, it's all out there on various pages, free and waiting to be read.
US-based met services, research institutes and even Internet portal sites have long been putting global weather information and forecasts on the Web. European met offices have followed to varying degrees, but even though Met Eireann uses one of the most advanced forecasting systems in the world, it has yet to launch a website of meteorological information.
General weather forecasts from the Irish met office are available via IOL's website (www.iol.ie) - which can email you a daily forecast - as well as via online newspapers (including this one at www.irish-times.com) and on RTE's website (www.rte.ie). However, more detailed forecasts are only available through other channels, such as premium rate phone numbers and radio bulletins.
Web users would benefit from more detailed information from Met Eireann, whose detailed forecasts are highly sophisticated. For short-range forecasting (one to two days) it uses a state-of-the-art forecasting system called HIRLAM (High-resolution limited area model), which it codeveloped with the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. Seamus O Laoghog, assistant director and former head of IT at Met Eireann, says the Irish HIRLAM system collects data from an international network of buoys, balloons, satellites, and other sources. This is processed by a Silicon Graphics Unix machine in its headquarters in Glasnevin.
Meanwhile, he says, for longerrange forecasts Met Eireann (like many other met offices) uses the services of the European Centre for Medium Range Forecasts (ECMWF) in Britain (www.ecmwf.int). ECMWF's Fujitsu supercomputers crunch through mountains of global data to come up with the bigger picture - the two to 10-day forecasts.
But Web users will have to wait until next year to tap into Met Eireann's more detailed forecasts online. Tom Sheridan, head of Met Eireann's commercial division, says a website is being planned. "We would hope to have it by the end of this year," he says, but it is likely to be still developing then.
Sheridan says the site will contain basic forecasts, some charts, sea area forecast, gale warnings, and six-hourly satellite images from MeteoSat. Later on, it will add specialised services including detailed forecasts and charts, and services aimed at sectors such as marine, farming and transport. However these will not be free, he says.
So, if you want detailed information online, where do you go? Thankfully there are many sites which include information for Ireland, particularly if you can read the charts and interpret what they mean.
One of the best local sources is a website called The Interactive Travel Guide to the best of Ireland (www.iol.ie/discover). Its weather page contains charts, satellite photos, average climate information, and links to many other sites for forecasts, wave heights, temperature maps, and so on.
For recent readings from airports around the world, courtesy of the US National Weather Service (NWS), try http:// weather.noaa.gov/weather/ metar.shtml. You can enter EIDW for Dublin, EINN for Shannon, EICK for Cork and EIKN for Knock, but you need to know your met terminology to be able to interpret the table that returns. The NWS home page, www.nws.noaa.gov is also worth a look, while aviators can get a weather fix from www.iol.ie/ markzee/weather.htm.
Seagoing types can check wave, temperature, wind and other readings from the various weather buoys around Ireland and Britain. These come courtesy of the US National Weather Service in Florida, at www.nws.fsu.edu/buoy/ europe.html. Closer to home, the British met office is at www.meto.govt.uk and contains the latest weather and forecasts, as well as a host of services on its MetWEB site. But, setting an example for Met Eireann, you have to pay for these more detailed forecasts.
For the big picture, there are plenty of satellite pictures around. Links to them can be found from the Irish Meteorological Society's website, at http:/ /indigo.ie/kcommins/ metsoc1.htm, which also contains links to many other interesting meteorological sites.
Finally, for links to satellite pictures and CNN, Yahoo and other weather resources, you can check out the Irish Internet Weather Centre, at www.lochnet.com/client/gs/ iw.html, where you will be told: "Since June, 1996, over 64317 [people] have used this page to find out that it's going to rain tomorrow."
Eoin Licken: elicken@irish-times.ie