Hurricane Forecast Team
No doubt many are familiar with the annual forecasts of Atlantic hurricane activity issued by Professor William Gray and his colleagues at Colorado State University. This official Web site of that group provides much more than the usual bare-bones CNN Bill Gray sound bites. Rather, it offers in-depth information on both the processes and the results of the group's extensive investigations into pre-season climatological signals that anticipate upcoming hurricane activity.
Office of Climate, Water, and Weather Services - Hurricane Awareness
This site provides several on-line preparedness guides in both Spanish and English, current watches and warnings, on-line tracking charts, and links to many of the national agencies dealing with hurricane preparedness, response, and recovery.
Tropical Prediction Center
The mission of the Tropical Prediction Center is to save lives and protect property by issuing watches, warnings, forecasts, and analyses of hazardous weather conditions in the tropics. TPC products are generated for use in both the domestic and international communities.
Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre Seasonal Forecasts of Extreme Weather Events
This site includes long-range forecasts for U.S. landfalling and Atlantic hurricanes, Far East landfalling and NW Pacific typhoons, and Australian landfalling and SW Pacific cyclones.
Coastal Hazards Information Clearinghouse
This site contains a 10-chapter monograph on coastal hazards, detailed coastal hazard maps for all coastal states, photos of property damage from several recent hurricanes, and a list of coastal hazard links for each state.
DisasterSafety.org Hurricanes
This site includes videos, publications, and links to information about hurricane mitigation measures.
Extreme Weather Sourcebook 2001
This updated site provides quick access to data on economic damage from hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, lightning, and other weather phenomena in the United States and its territories. Visitors to the Extreme Weather Sourcebook will find the states and U.S. territories ranked in order of economic losses from hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and all three events combined. A dollar figure for average annual losses for each state is also provided. Links take the reader to graphs with more detailed information on cost per year for each state and each hazard.
FAQ: Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Tropical Cyclones
What a cyclone is, how it forms, definitions of terms, where to get more information primarily on the physical/meteorological aspects of cyclones rather than their societal impacts.
Historical Hurricane Tracks
The Historical Hurricane Tracks site contains an interactive mapping application that allows users to query and display 150 years of Atlantic Basin tropical cyclone data from the National Hurricane Center's Tropical Cyclone Best Track data set. The ability to plot user-defined portions of the data set and download credible and reliable data will enhance knowledge of hurricane climatology for any location within the Atlantic Basin. The web site includes text documents detailing particular storm events and graphs showing historical population data versus hurricane strikes for coastal counties from Texas to Maine.
Hurricane Andrew in South Florida: Mesoscale Weather and Societal Responses
Roger Pielke Jr.
The first report of the Extreme Mesoscale Events and Impacts Project. The report's purposes are to reframe the US hurricane problem in terms of societal vulnerability by discussing trends in coastal population, property development, and hurricane incidence; to place hurricane forecasts in the broader context of societal preparedness and response; and to review the Andrew experience in that broader context. An appendix to the report provides an annotated bibliography of various articles, reports, and journal articles that discuss Andrew's societal impacts.
Hurricanes: Nature's Greatest Storms
This NOAA site presents the latest hurricane news and extensive background information, as well as links to numerous sources of hurricane information, including local sites.
Mapping Coastal Change Hazards
Resource managers must be able to predict where and how much coastal change will occur to locate new construction landward of coastal change hazards. Developing this predictive capability requires quantifying how coasts respond to extreme storms. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists, in partnership with NASA, have developed a new extreme-storm hazards map and a new scale that categorizes expected coastal change (erosion and accretion) that occurs during storms. Both are available on this site.
National Climatic Data Center Hurricane Maps
A complete resource of hurricane maps from 1899-1996.
The 2001 National Hurricane Operation Plan
Office of Climate, Water, and Weather Services Service Assessments
This link has data on many different hurricanes. These links are in.pdf format; you will need ACROBAT to read these files.
Repeat Response to Hurricane Evacuation Orders
A Quick Response Report by Dr. Kirstin Dow and Susan L. Cutter
STORM2006 Hurricane Central
A complete resource covering the recent U.S. hurricane season.
The Sun-Sentinel's Hurricane Page
Tropical Weather
Weather maps, reports, forecasts, products, news, software, outlooks, and discussions.
USA Today's Guide to Hurricane Information
USGS Hurricanes and Coastal Storm Websites
This site includes links to other USGS sites that provide real-time data, background maps and studies, historical analyses of specific storms, and other reports about hurricanes.
The Weather Channel Forum on Hurricane Preparedness and Response
The findings and recommendations of The Weather Channel Forum on Hurricane Preparedness and Response, developed by the Atmospheric Policy Program of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), suggest that our nation is at serious risk of severe damage and loss of life caused by hurricanes. The forum report, available from the AMS Web site, calls for an assessment of the vulnerability of communities with potential exposure to hurricanes and the development of improvements in the preparedness, prediction, communications, and response strategies at the national, regional, and local levels. To find the report, click on "Atmospheric Policy Program" on the left side of the home page, then "Report of the Weather Channel Forum."
