CLIMATOLOGY MENU Hurricane tracks

Digital Atmosphere offers a database of historical hurricane tracks, taken every six hours, for storms that occurred in the East Pacific and Atlantic basins from 1850 to 2002. The tracks will be displayed on the active workchart.

Year. Use the range boxes to display data for a certain time period. To display data for only one year, enter the same year in both boxes.

Line width. Enter a number here to control the width of the lines that will be plotted. The recommended value of 4 should be used.

Plot storm name at origin. Plots a label containing the storm's name at the beginning of the track.

Plot date labels along track. Plots dates and times along the length of each storm track.

Color code for wind speed. Changes the line color of the previous segment based on the sustained wind speed at that time. The values are: Gray 0-34 kt (tropical depression); Black 35-63 kt (tropical storm); Green 64-83 kt (hurricane, Saffir Simpson 1); Yellow 84-95 kt (Saffir Simpson 2); Red 96-113 kt (Saffir Simpson 3); Purple 114-134 kt (Saffir Simpson 4); Blue 135+ kt (Saffir Simpson 5).

The source of the data is the NHC HURDAT tables at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastall.shtml . The tables are provided in Digital Atmosphere verbatim, so users are free to swap out the existing tables with fresh ones. The files are located in the /hurr directory.