Have you ever browsed the "World Weather Information Service" (WWIS) and "Severe Weather Information Centre" (SWIC) websites? These two websites are developed and operated by the Hong Kong Observatory on behalf of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) of the United Nations to provide official weather information around the globe. The two websites (English versions) commenced trial operation in 2001 and started formal operation in 2005.

The WWIS website provides official city forecasts and observations around the world, while the SWIC provides severe weather information such as Tropical Cyclone and heavy rain. Arabic, Chinese and Portuguese versions have been developed for the WWIS in the past two years, while the French and Spanish versions are in the pipeline. The websites are very popular as exemplified by the high hit rate of the WWIS with an average of 300 thousand page visits per day.

With effect on 23 March 2006, the official domain names of the WWIS (English version) and SWIC websites have been changed to "worldweather.wmo.int" and "severe.worldweather.wmo.int" respectively. These new domain names carry the tag ".wmo.int" which clearly identify themselves as the official websites of the World Meteorological Organization and indicate that they have an international standing.

To enable smooth operation, the old domain names viz. www.worldweather.org and severe.worldweather.org would continue to be used for some time. However, the public is encouraged to use the new domain names for accessing these two websites from now on.

Those interested can browse the following hyperlinks at the past press release archives to obtain more background information.

http://www.weather.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2001/pre1208e.htm
http://www.weather.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2002/pre0302e.htm
http://www.weather.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2002/pre1209e.htm
http://www.weather.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2003/pre1128e_WMO.htm
http://www.weather.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2004/pre0223e.htm
http://www.weather.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2004/pre0729e.htm
http://www.weather.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2004/pre1202e.htm
http://www.weather.gov.hk/wxinfo/news/2004/pre1209e.htm