New members joining the World Weather Information Service

31 December 2009

It is encouraging in 2009 as more and more national meteorological services joined the World Weather Information Service (WWIS). After the Iraqi Meteorological Organization and the Afghan Meteorological Authority, the Hydrometeorological Service of Guyana in South America joined the WWIS in December, becoming the 123rd Member of WWIS. Altogether, 10 places of Guyana have been added to the list of cities with official weather forecasts.

The WWIS website (http://worldweather.wmo.int ) is the world's first and only website for official city forecasts. It has a total of eight language versions: English, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and Italian. It is managed by the Hong Kong Observatory on behalf of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Presently, 123 WMO Members supply official weather forecasts for over 1,300 cities to the website. The website also contains climatological data for the cities, which are extremely useful for travel planning.