McIDAS generates multicolor composites of conventional and satellite weather data in a variety of displays in two and three dimensions as well as time-lapse sequences of these analysis. Designed to handle large amounts of meteorological imagery and other atmospheric data in a convienent manner, the system provides a vast resource of image-processing and applications programs and subroutines. McIDAS hardware and software are used throughout the world.

The McIDAS design focuses on four attributes :

• scientific use of time sequential satellite data
• fusion of diverse databases
• access to real-time databases
• support for operational and research user communities

The Space Science and Engineering Center of the University of Wisconsin - Madison has actively developed the McIDAS since the early 1970's. McIDAS consists of over one and one-half million lines of code contained in nearly four thousand modules.