Editor's Note: We first started work on this web site back in 1995 when the web was still a new thing. In thinking of all the "futuristic" features of all sorts that we had been tasked to includ in it, we jokingly named it Weather World (perhaps after Disney World, or maybe Wally World in the Chevy Chase film). We started to add "2000" to that as was popular at the time for future looking products, but decided that it was too close, and bumped the number up to 2010. Although it was the development code name, we decided to keep it, shortening it to WW2010.

Ironically, now in actual 2010, the site seems dated, both stylistically and technologically, though the information herein is still useful. Still, it has served literally billions of web "hits" since we started it, and still gets tens of thousands of visitors daily. It is still ranked near the top of Google search results for certain meteorological terms. If the site goes down, we get plenty of e-mail from people who still use it. When fast internet access was still rare for most people, we sold (at cost) nearly 10,000 copies of a CD-ROM containing the same contents that you see here.

Although sophisticated web sites are the expected norm, the navigation and cross-referencing system was somewhat revolutionary for it's time. Because we didn't have all the web server and programming technologies that are readily available today, we built most of the technology from scratch. Unfortunately, this means that most of the content isn't in a form that is easily ported to modern technology, without alot of work. The site has been in it's current form since 1999.

This was all a volunteer effort on the part of some passionate young individuals who didn't have much else to do with their evenings at the time (with alot of help from others) and was never a funded project. As all the original developers are off doing things elsewhere (save me, the guy who did the programming), there's just not been time or money to redo it.

Popular Features:

• Hurricanes
• Clouds and Precipitation
• El Niño

Developed by the Department of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), WW2010 (the weather world 2010 project) is a WWW framework for integrating current and archived weather data with multimedia instructional resources using new and innovative technologies.

To ensure the greatest possible accuracy of our instructional resources, all materials have been reviewed and edited by professors and scientists from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and the Illinois State Water Survey.

This is a work-in-progress, so we will release sections as they are completed. To access a low graphics version of this server, click the "text" option in the blue User Interface menu (left).

This web server is a result of cooperation amongst personnel in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Collaborative Visualization Project (CoVis), the Horizon Project, and NCSA. The Collaborative Visualization Project was funded by the National Science Foundation under NSF grant RED-9454729, while the Horizon project was funded by NASA CAN Project Test Applications and Digital Library Technologies in Support of Public Access to Earth and Space Science Data, Grant Number NCC-5-106.

Terms for using data resources. CD-ROM available. Credits and Acknowledgments for WW2010. Department of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Online Guides