History of the Plymouth State Weather Center

The Plymouth State Weather Center web portal was established in 1994. It was created by emeritus professor James Koermer, with support and assistance from Ted Wisniewski and Information Technology Services (ITS). At the time, Plymouth State was one of the first institutions in the country to provide global access to real time weather data via the internet. A year later, a National Science Foundation supported Unidata equipment grant provided hardware upgrades. In 1999, a NOAAPORT system was added to provide a more reliable source of real time weather data. Server upgrades in 2003, 2008 and 2013 with support from NOAA and NASA have provided additional processing power and data storage capacity.

Over the years, a number of meteorological software packages have been used to generate graphics for the website. Legacy packages such as WXP (developed by Dan Vietor, formerly of Purdue University and Unisys) and McIDAS-X (developed by University of Wisconsin's Space Science Engineering Center) continue to provide a large quantity of custom products seen today. More recently, GEMPAK, IDV, and NCL provide a variety of real time weather map graphics.

In 2014, the first phase of a project to update the website was undertaken by Brendon Hoch and Kevin Lupo, with the primary goals of modernizing the look and making the site easier to use. The work was completed in 2015.

As always, if you find our website useful, please consider a donation to help continue our efforts in providing the Plymouth State Weather Center.