Displaying Historical TC Track Data with GIS
NOAA's Coastal Services Center maintains a detailed online interactive
mapping tool called Historical Hurricane Tracks.
It offers users the ability to search and display Atlantic Basin and East-Central Pacific Basin tropical cyclone
data. The information can also be downloaded in widely-used GIS data formats.
Search for Historical Hurricane Tracks
When you visit the link above,
the left side bar allows you to query storms
by their Name, ZIP code, Place Name, etc. You can build your custom query for the storm that interests you.
Once you get the resultant page of storm data, you can click the "extract tool" (the icon looks like an arrow
pointing to a disk drive). Then you can then go to the left side bar and choose the data you wish to download
(such as storm tracks for the Atlantic or Pacific Basins, metadata, etc).
Please note that the link provided above will not contain data for the current season until the storms have had
their entire datasets analyzed. For example, the 2007 season should be online by early 2008. You might
try clicking "Resource Links" on the left side bar to view current hurricane and tropical storm information.
Another good source of vulnerability maps and GIS data is NOAA's
Coastal Risk Atlas. This site helps
hurricane preparedness efforts by providing the data and methodology
necessary to conduct vulnerability assessments for the coastal United States.
To see all National Weather Service data available in GIS formats, please visit
www.weather.gov/gis.
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