NOAA UNVEILS ‘STORM TRACKER’ TO FOLLOW TROPICAL STORMS AND HURRICANES

June 1, 2005 � As the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season gets underway, NOAA today introduced a new way to follow specific tropical storms or hurricanes. NOAA Storm Tracker will contain live links to advisories, tracking maps and satellite images of a particular storm that is projected to strike the United States or other nations in a storm’s path. (Click NOAA image for larger view of NOAA Storm Tracker. Please credit “NOAA.”)

NOAA Storm Tracker also will include links to data from ocean buoys, affected airports and the latest high resolution satellite imagery of a tropical storm or hurricane. Storm Tracker is designed to open a new and smaller browser window, which can be resized and placed anywhere on a computer desktop. This allows the user to continue surfing the Internet while keeping track of a storm. The live links in NOAA Storm Tracker will update automatically without having to “refresh” or “reload” the browser window.

NOAA Web sites were literally stormed by millions of people during the very intense 2004 hurricane season, which saw four hurricanes strike the state of Florida. The NOAA home page received 1.2 billion hits for all of 2004, with nearly half of that traffic in September alone. The Web sites of NOAA’s National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service received more than 8 billion hits during the months of August, September and October—when the Atlantic spawned one storm after another. (Click NOAA image for larger view of NOAA Storm Tracker as it appears on a computer desktop. Click here for high resolution version, which is a large file. Please credit “NOAA.”)

“NOAA Web sites have proven to be enormously popular with citizens in the United States and worldwide,” said retired Navy Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “Saving life and protecting property is one of the primary missions of NOAA, and one way we communicate vital information is through our Web sites.”

NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship of the nation's coastal and marine resources.

Relevant Web Sites
NOAA Storm Tracker

NOAA Hurricanes Page

NOAA National Hurricane Center

Media Contact:
Greg Hernandez, NOAA, (202) 482-3091