New SWIdget Service of Severe Weather Information Centre Gaining Popularity

Two new members, Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) of the Republic of Korea and National Environment Agency (NEA) of Singapore start providing the Severe Weather Information Center (SWIC) SWIdget service today (30 December 2010). SWIdget users can now obtain the following warnings from the five contributing weather services in near real-time:

Hong Kong, China	All warnings issued for Hong Kong (see http://www.hko.gov.hk/textonly/explain/intro.htm for a complete list)
Macao, China	Tropical Cyclone Signals, Strong Monsoon Signal, Rainstorm Warning Signal, Thunderstorm Warning Signaland Storm Surge Warning Signals
Guam, United States	Tropical Cyclone Public Advisory and Local Statement, Special Weather Statement for Mariana and Micronesia
Republic of Korea	Typhoon Signals
Singapore	Heavy Rain Warning

SWIdget is a software tool developed by the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) on behalf of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) for users of personal computers (PCs) to automatically retrieve official severe weather warning messages from the SWIC website.

After making the choice on the "Warning Option" page of the SWIdget user interface (Figure 1), the user is able to retrieve their selected official weather warning messages. A dialogue box (Figure 2) will pop up with an audio alarm on the user's PC whenever there is a change of warning status.

For the existing SWIdget users, there is no need to re-install the software for retrieving the weather warnings for Singapore and Republic of Korea. Users can just make the selection using the installed SWIdget. For new users, the SWIdget software can be downloaded from the SWIC website at http://severe.worldweather.org/swidget/swidget.html. The SWIdget installation guide and user guide can also be found on this webpage.

SWIC is a WMO website (http://severe.worldweather.wmo.int/) that integrates and enhances regional activities to reduce loss of life and damages due to severe weather. The website provides tropical cyclone information originated from official weather services in different regions of the world. Apart from tropical cyclones, the website also provides official observation data for severe weather including gales, heavy rain and thunderstorm. SWIdget is gaining popularity since its launch in end of June 2010 and the visit figures have reached nearly 4.5 millions in just a few months from July to November.