From time to time, the Web staff receives e-mails such as the one received today, Jan. 9:

"Just a reminder to update many of the doppler images, 5-day forecast, etc. Several of them havent been updated since 12/18."

I can assure you that we would never be able to make it more than an hour without getting a barage of e-mail from users -- and our servers -- if our weather graphics were outdated. And on the rare occasions we have problems like this, fixing them is our highest priority.

Outdated content on the site is almost always caused by browsers serving up "cached" versions of content. Web browsers such as Internet Explorer cache or store previously viewed content because it speeds page loading. But on news and information sites, caching can be a bad thing, and it results in e-mails such as the one above.

If you ever visit a site and expect to see more current content, it is good to clear your browser's cache. In Internet Explorer, that is done by holding down the SHIFT key and clicking on the REFRESH button in the browser's toolbar. If newer content is available, it will be displayed when the page is reloaded. The old content will be discarded.

To make sure you are always getting the latest content available, it is best to set your browser to always check for new content. In IE, this is done by going to the TOOLS menu, then INTERNET OPTIONS, then SETTINGS. Select "Automatically check for newer versions of stored pages."

Consult the HELP pages in other browsers for instructions on setting preferences for cached content.