Coastal Services Center

NOAA creates and distributes valuable weather information before, during, and after hurricanes. Examples include rainfall forecasts, flash flood warnings, wind speed forecasts, and cumulative rainfall estimates. Many of these data sets are available on the Internet, but are scattered over many Web sites and are in different formats. This tutorial guides users, click by click, through the process of downloading, converting, and displaying these data in a geographic information system (GIS). A GIS allows users to display NOAA data with local data (e.g. roads, critical facilities, and vulnerable populations) to get a better picture of storm impacts on a community.

This tutorial provides step-by-step guidance in the following ways:

• Discussion of where to find NOAA National Weather Service data and other related resources
• Basic direction on how to use GIS for cartographic production
• Standard cartographic principles in designing specific presentation-quality maps

Download Storm Mapping Tutorial (ZIP).