There is an air - and I use the word advisedly - of expectancy this morning in Glas nevin: Met Eireann is awaiting visitors.
It does not envisage lengthy queues outside its pyramidal aras by the Tolka, but it is eager to welcome passing surfers to its suiomh Idirlin . Yes, Met Eireann has entered the World Wide Web; it has found itself a niche in cyberspace. It has a website.
Of course I sneer and taunt and jest, and would try to be, in Benjamin Disraeli's words, "a great master of all gibes and flouts and jeers". But, at the end of all, one must admit that they have got it right; the site is good, it's very, very good.
It contains all you might wish to know about Met Eireann and, more importantly, so some may think, provides an omnium gatherum of many useful facts and figures about present, past and future Irish weather.
The home page has a general forecast and a three-day weather outlook for the country as a whole, and you can refine your search to get more detailed information for the individual provinces or greater Dublin. Then, if it interests you, you can view the latest weather reports from a score or so of Irish weather stations.
The message is very easily understood, but even if any of the words are mystifying, you can surf to a glossary which tells you the meaning of a wide variety of weather terms.
You can also obtain information on the weather of the recent past, and access a wide range of climatological statistics. If you are a connoisseur, you can view the latest tephigram compiled at Valentia Observatory in Co Kerry; and if you have no idea whatever what a tephigram may be, scroll down the page and all will be explained.
And of course a weather site could not be called a weather site without the latest images from satellites, and these are online too.
If you feel you need a second opinion on any of these matters, the site provides a multitude of links to European weather services, from the Meteorological Institute of Finland to the splendidly named Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia.
And as regards Met Eireann itself, the site includes a comprehensive account of its work and organisation, and a lengthy article which describes the development of meteorology in Ireland from the 1860s to the present day .
All this is tastefully displayed in pastel shades of green and yellow, and the pages are commendably free of clutter and easy on the eye. You can see them for yourself if you click your mouse on www.met.ie.