Severe Weather Information Centre of WMO provides worldwide heavy rain information

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Severe Weather Information Centre (SWIC) website hosted by the Hong Kong Observatory recently launched a new service to make available official observation data of heavy rain (including snow) around the world. The information will help people to grasp the most recent global weather situation.

The SWIC website has previously been providing information on Tropical Cyclones. From July 1 onwards, observation data of other severe weather types will be added to the website in stages for reference by the public and the media.

As heavy rain (including snow) can lead to flooding and other related disasters, a web page showing the global distribution of heavy rain events is the first service to be introduced. The web page displays the locations of occurrence of heavy rain with amounts greater than 50 mm in 24 hours on a map together with the observation data. The page is updated four times a day. Hyperlinks of the official websites of the countries providing the reports are shown together with the data for ease of reference.

Those who are interested in the new service are welcome to visit the website at
http://severe.worldweather.org/other/ for details.

Figure 1: Web page showing distribution of heavy rain around the world

Figure 2: Rainfall data, location of station and corresponding country displayed on regional web page