The Met Office has launched a new dashboard of weather gadgets aimed at allowing users (broadband recommended) to add and customise information from the Met Office website. The suite of options are free to download and include localised weather forecasts, severe weather warnings, marine warnings and radar images.

The gadgets are mini-applications – available on the Windows Vista operating system or via a Mozilla Firefox browser – that allow users to have automatically updated weather information at a glance, while working on other tasks.

On both Firefox and Vista, clicking on the information will take users to the Met Office website.

The launch of gadgets follows the launch in July of an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) newsfeed of severe weather warnings.

What information is available?
* My weather – Latest observation for your preferred location
* My forecast – Forecast for today and tomorrow for your preferred region
* Latest radar – Latest radar image for the UK
* Latest infrared satellite – Latest infrared satellite image for the UK
* Warnings – Areas coloured red in your preferred region when severe weather is expected today
* In addition, a warning symbol on the header when severe weather is expected in any region in the next 5 days
* Sea areas gale warnings – Sea areas coloured red when gale warnings in force
* Inshore waters strong wind warnings – Coastal waters coloured red when strong wind warnings in force