The KHOU NowCaster program is very easy to use. It is designed to run unattended on your PC desktop and provide you with current weather information and popup severe weather alerts direct from the KHOU Weather Center. In addition, NowCaster provides an immediate image link to our SkyMax11 Doppler radar and a real-time map of weather bulletins and the counties affected.

• System Requirements 
• Frequently Asked Questions

Startup:

Make certain you are connected to the Internet either via your modem or through your local area network (LAN) At present, NowCaster will not work with a proxy server on a LAN, but a future version will.

If you are not connected to the Internet, NowCaster will display a screen saying "cannot make a connection" and also possibly show an error message. Your dialup networking connection will be displayed and you'll have the option of making an Internet connection.

NowCaster will connect to the KHOU website and download the latest information when it starts up...you may see a short delay or some images that pause during loading.

Operation:

NowCaster will run continuously while you are connected to the Internet. You can do anything else on the web you desire, surf web pages, send or view email, chat rooms, downloads, whatever. NowCaster will not interfere with these activities.

When running, NowCaster will show slides of current weather and maps, plus a small scrolling window of weather in major Texas cities. Many of the slides can be viewed in larger size by clicking on them. You can stop/start slides and go forward and back using the VCR like controls just below the slide window.

You can also use the KHOU Launchpad by clicking on the menu button at any time. This gives you a menu a hotlinks to selected News, Weather, Sports, and community information.

You can minimize NowCaster if you don't wish to see the weather information as it is updated, but it will still be working in the background, monitoring for severe weather, and it will alert you if any occurs.

Below is a diagram of the Operation controls that are available in NowCaster:

Note that you can click on any area of the
NowCaster frame, hold and drag, to move
the program anywhere on the desktop.

Automatic Weather Alerts:

As long as NowCaster is turned on, it will silently monitor for weather bulletins in the KHOU-TV coverage area. When a weather bulletin is issued, NowCaster will "pop up" up to three windows (based on your preferences settings-see below).
These windows can be in the form of:

• A text crawl at the top or bottom of the screen
• A window showing the full body of the weather bulletin and all details
• A window showing a county map of the KHOU-TV coverage area and the counties that are affected

In addition, an audio message from Dr. Neil Frank can announce a new bulletin. If you don't have a sound card or speakers, the PC system speaker will beep. You can turn off sounds in the preferences control (see below).

Preferences:

You can set NowCaster to operate the way you like it. For example, some people don't like sound on alerts...you can turn those off. Many other preference controls are available.

Below is a diagram of the Preference controls that are available in NowCaster: