McIDAS

McIDAS
Developer(s)University of Wisconsin–Madison
Initial releaseJune 1972
Websitewww.ssec.wisc.edu/mcidas/

McIDAS, the "Man computer Interactive Data Access System", is a weather forecasting tool developed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the 1970s and used continually to this day. In its early incarnations, it was widely used to generate graphics for television stations, but today is used primarily by the NOAA and related agencies. Users of the McIDAS system developed a similar version for microcomputers and sold by ColorGraphics Weather Systems that generated much of the computerized weather imagery seen on television in the US in the 1980s.