The impetus for the creation of this service came with the Sandoz chemical disaster near Basel in 1986. During the fire, health and safety services tried to get information pertaining to the wind direction in order to protect the population from poisonous and noxious gases. After receiving conflicting information from Swiss, French and German meteorological services – Basel is located at the tripoint of these three countries – researchers at the local university formed the Institute for Meteorology, Climatology and Remote Sensing intending to model the local weather situation more precisely. As this meteorological service did not yet have its own dedicated data center, weather predictions offered through the university's website were not available at all times, but the service soon grew into a favoured information source for alpinists, para-gliders, astronomers and farmers.