Worthing's weather website's an international hit

NASA and the Vatican are just two of many global organisations to have visited High Salvington-based Tony Powell's site, www.worthing-weather.com

Mr Powell uses a variety of weather instruments to display local and international conditions and, together with an American company, has pioneered revolutionary software on the site providing real-time tracking of lightning strikes and storms.

"It's what NASA use around the space shuttle," said Mr Powell.

"We do have quite a lot of global interest. A lot of sites in the US link to us.

"The thing I like about it best is getting to talk to people all over the world."

The site was developed to try to stimulate interest in weather in colleges and schools, and has been specifically designed to be as accessible to curious visitors as it is to hardened meteorologists.

Perhaps bizarrely, the world-famous Mr Powell's hope is to create more interest in the site among the people it was built for '“ Worthing residents.

"As soon as there's a bit of bad weather, I get about 1,200 hits," said Mr Powell.

"But the lowest proportion of them are people from Worthing."

The most recent additions to the site are satellite images showing the movement of weather systems across Europe.

In the next few weeks, the site will feature information from other satellites orbiting the earth.