Source Acknowledgements

Weather Related Information

Australian Bureau of Meteorology
- Note that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology does not officially endorse my maps, however, their input has made them much better for the purpose.
I would like to thank Jon Gill, Services Policy Branch, Bureau of Meteorology, for his valuable feedback on the contents of my website, and for sending me a list of place names used by the BoM in their official warnings. His information has been most helpful in preparing the current set of Australian Cyclone Tracking Maps.
The BoM website is worth a visit, having all current weather information, and plenty of explanatory material to look through.
BoM Weather Warnings page
- where all cyclone track information used in the Australian TC path maps was downloaded from. When cyclones are present in the Australian region, links to current cyclone information near the top of my Current Cyclone Information page are copied from here. The weather warnings for any cyclones and other weather situations are updated at usually regular intervals, the timing of which depends on current conditions. I must commend the staff of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for their diligenge in keeping their website information up to date under what must at times be very busy and difficult circumstances.
BoM Satellite Images page
- current and recent satellite images of the Australian region can be viewed and downloaded from here. The satellite images available are sourced from the Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS 5) of the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). The Commonwealth of Australia (Bureau of Meteorology) receives and processes the GMS-5 images. The images supplied are 12 kilometre resolution 640x512 pixel Lambert conformal projections at 5 bits per pixel, updated at 6 hr intervals. Some animations were compiled from selections of satellite images downloaded from here.
BoM "Surviving Cyclones" online pamphlet
- Be prepared, make sure you have read and understand the information publicly available from local authorities concerning preparing for cylones before a cyclone threat emerges. This pamphlet is a good place to start. Some of the information on the Plotting Cyclones page was adapted from this pamphlet.

James Cook University, Townsville, Qld.
Satellite Images, FTP: at times EST, at times UTC, Latest: Australia Satellite Image and 24 hour movie, NE Australia and 24 hour movie, N Australia, Conditions of Use
- during the Australian cyclone season, links to some of these pages will be pasted near the top of my Current Cyclone Information page to provide easy access to the excellent range of frequently updated satellite images available here.

Fiji Meteorological Service
RSMC - Nadi Tropical Cyclone Centre
- a well presented concise website with information on current weather conditions in Fiji and the South Pacific Islands region, and climate information as well.
International Marine Forecasts/Warnings
Satellite Map & Weather Map
Tropical Cyclones/Disturbance Information
- when cyclones are located in the Nadi Tropical Cyclone Centre area of responsibility, links near the top of my Current Cyclone Information page are copied from here.

Dr Disk - Hong Kong
- maintained by my brother, Phil Smith, a Hong Kong resident who has his own computer consultancy. During the Northern Hemisphere Typhoon season, the links near the top of my Current Cyclone Information page are copied directly from here, many of my typhoon animations, maps, and other information I have sent him is available on his website, and many of the links that appear on my World Wide Weather Links page were also found on his website.

Joint Typhoon Warning Centre
- the typhoon information for my typhoon animations, which are available at Dr Disk - Hong kong, was downloaded from this US military website. The coastlines used in the Hong Kong tracking maps are based mainly on those used in the typhoon position maps downloaded from here.

Hurricanes, Typhoons & Tropical Cyclones
- by Thomas R. Metcalf. The set of maps that load on my Current Worldwide Cyclone Activity Maps page are called up directly from this excellent website. The GIF maps are updated regularly by cyclone tracking software that can also be downloaded from within the website. This is a good place to look for information on cyclones, as complete track data and maps are available.

Hong Kong Tropical Cyclone Warning Signal Probability Forecast
- maintained by Cecil Ma. A well maintained and frequently updated website. Many of the links that appear on my World Wide Weather Links page were found there.

Australian Severe Weather
-the idea for the Current Worldwide Cyclone Activity Maps page came from seeing the Australian Severe Weather - Southern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclones page, by Michael Bath and Jimmy Deguara, which is an excellent site to visit. Some of the links on my World Wide Weather Links page were found here.

Current Australian Weather News
- by Laurier Williams, very comprehensive weather links and useful information. Some of the links on my World Wide Weather Links page were found here.

Web Page Creation

Apple Computers
- all these web pages were created on an Apple Macintosh IIsi 9/80 computer, built in 1992, running System 7.5.3 software, available for free free download from Apple if you wish to update - you will need 24MB of free Hard Disk space to download all the floppy size disk images and a min. 80MB capacity HD to install.

Bare Bones Software
- I use BBEdit Lite 4.6 to write all the HTML pages on this website. As the freeware Lite version is so good, the commercial version must be packed with features. With BBEdit Lite, I am also using BBEdit HTML extensions r14 to quickly format the HTML.

iCab - internet Taxi for Macintosh
iCab pre-release 1.8 now available: Download PowerPC version, Download 68K version
You will need StuffIt Expander or another utility that unpacks .sit files.
- this new browser for Macintosh computers has a multitude of useful features, including a built in HTML checker that displays a smiley face on any web page that is correctly written to the W3c standards. The Error report function of the browser is most useful for debugging any page, listing all errors with a line/character number and kind of error, which makes finding and correcting them very easy. The iCab website also has a Browser Test page where you can check if your browser measures up to the international HTML standards. All the pages on my website are HTML error free, displaying a smiley face in iCab, so will display correctly in any web browser that is built to the international standards - I cannot say the same for many of the web pages I have visited.....

Map Creation

Online Map Creation
-the Australian map coastlines are based on digital maps drawn by submitting requests to the map drawing page of the OMC website which uses "Generic Mapping Tools (GMT)" to draw your maps and load them into your browser.

Australian Geographic Place Names (Gazetteer)
-many of the Australian map location coordinates were found in this Australian Government database.

GEMPAK Weather Station tables
- the Willis Island Queensland and Giles Western Australia Meteorological Station coordinates were found here.

Weather Underground of Hong Kong
WXHK English Language Forum
- during many months of fruitful discussion in this forum, much valuable feedback was gleaned that has contributed significantly to the quality of my maps. There is much interesting discussion on a multitude of weather related issues.

Webhost

ACE-NET
-is my Internet Service Provider on the Gold Coast, they provide an inexpensive yet quality service.

These maps and the web pages that contain them are drawn and maintained by Carl Smith .

Feedback: carls@qldnet.com.au | Return to Main Menu