In the spring of 2019, Northern Illinois University (NIU) applied for and received a
Unidata Community Equipment
Award
grant for a project titled “Bringing back weather.niu.edu: A multifaced
server at Northern Illinois University.”
The NIU Meteorology department (now Geographic and Atmospheric Sciences) has been involved
in the dissemination of meteorological data since the late 1990s, when
Russell L. DeSouza Award
winner
Mr. Gilbert Sebenste set up the “NIU Weather” server at weather.niu.edu
.
The server
relayed data to dozens of Universities via the LDM
and had a popular “storm machine” website that provided some of the earliest
model forecast soundings. After Mr. Sebenste's departure from NIU in 2017, the server was
taken off-line.