The Weather Control Panel

On July 26, 2007, the Weather Control Panel began its Web site. The official title was Northern Indiana Weather. The coverage area was the same as the National Weather Service’s North Webster office, including most counties in northern Indiana, eight counties in northwest Ohio, and five in southwest Michigan. The site quickly grew, and went through many redesigns. Later, a decision was made that the site name did not appeal to all people in the coverage area and should be changed. The Weather Control Panel (abbreviated WCP) became the new title. Another new service started in November. Site visitors could request to become a member of the site and receive site updates and exclusive weather data on new pages. On December 7, the WCP joined the Weather Ring, which links various homemade weather websites together. On February 18, 2008, the member program was discontinued, due to a lack of interest, and on that same day, the first WCP expansion was announced. A new site was set up for the entire state of Indiana, and launched on July 1, 2008. This expansion was part of a major expansion plan. This plan would create sites for Ohio, and Michigan – both the upper and lower peninsula. Long-term future plans included Illinois and Kentucky. Then, on July 19 and 21, all WCP sites were closed and ended their services. They are still open to comments about this change, but a good amount of feedback will have to be recieved in order to bring the sites back online.