The Weather Channel's new CD-ROM, Everything Weather, lives up to its name. Serving as a multimedia meteorological encyclopedia, Everything Weather features fascinating storm footage, incredible photography, and a complete online glossary. Everything Weather also features a daily planner with daily weather trivia and a simple communication program that provides access via modem to The Weather Channel's forecasts.

An extraordinary user interface that serves both as eye candy and as a meteorological tool of sorts guides the user through different paths and options. As if it were the ultimate weather web page of the future, Everything Weather allows you to point & click onto a well-designed imagemap to retrieve video, imagery, and text on hurricanes, thunderstorms, winter storms, forecasting tools, clouds, and weather trivia. The text is thorough and complete...and the video is the same you'd expect to find on The Weather Channel.

Everything Weather also contains some bonus built-in toys. A hurricane tracker allows you to track and print current storms by entering in data easily obtainable on the internet or from television weathercasts. The tracking software can also plot and chart past storm data...and contains data files on major historical storms. There's also a wind chill calculator and a game of sorts that allows you to identify high-resolution pictures of clouds with their names.

However, Everything Weather is not without its flaws. Instant access to weather forecasts online via the CD-ROM is expensive; the charge is $.70/per phonecall. Future updates/revisions of the CD-ROM should route people to internet sites where forecast information can be found --without high 900-number fees. Some may also find the software over-simplified; it was not geared for professional meteorologists, so those weather enthusiasts trying to find hardcore meteorological information and data will be disappointed by the sugar-coated appearance and feel of the content.

Everything Weather contains all of the bells and whistles you'd expect to find in a product made by The Weather Channel. Dazzling graphics, stunning photographs, amazing videos, and an incredibly easy interface make-up for the sugar-coated content. Unless you're a professional meteorologist seeking expert information, Everything Weather is the perfect computer companion to the wild world of weather.

The CD-ROM is availabe in software stores or directly from The Weather Channel (1-800-544-6206x22). The current street-price for Everything Weather is $39.95.