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Weather at Home

New Zealanders with computers will soon be able to do their own weather forecasting using the latest satellite photographs, thanks to a system developed by Victoria University meteorologist Dr Jim McGregor.

The information is expected to be invaluable to people like farmers, trampers and fishers who need accurate weather information, and is also of great benefit for research and teaching at the university. The system will enable computer users with modems to look at the hourly weather pictures transmitted by a Japanese satellite.

McGregor's program imports the latest pictures from a site in the US and turns them into a form suitable for use in this region, cutting the global picture down to focus on New Zealand and the surrounding ocean. It also superimposes a map of New Zealand with longitude and latitude lines, and adjusts the picture so that the users look at the area as if they were directly above (whereas the satellite actually takes the pictures from above the Equator).

Users can access the last 72 hourly pictures, and those with more powerful computers can even call up an animated version of the files -- a sort of brief film of the New Zealand weather patterns as seen from the sky which gives a clear and vivid impression of the way the weather is moving.

"We want to make this information available freely on the understanding that it is not used for commercial purposes," McGregor says. "It would be useful for people like farmers and mountaineers, and schools could tap into it for weather projects."