Tropical Cyclones

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Jonathan Vigh's Tropical Cyclone Page

DO NOT use the information on this page for life and death decisions. These pages are provided only as an information resource and are in no way meant to convey official storm information. Go to the NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER for all official storm information for the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific basins.

Links in green are pages or products that I have created and maintain.

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Operational Forecast Centers

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National Hurricane Center/Tropical Prediction Center  

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Central Pacific Hurricane Center                                     

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Joint Typhoon Warning Center

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Canadian Hurricane Centre

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INSMET (Instituto de Meterología de la República de Cuba)   

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RSMC Tokyo

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Hong Kong Observatory

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WMO Severe Weather Information Centre     Use this site to get official warning information for any storm in the world
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List of all the RSMCs and Map of Their Areas of Responsibility

Tropical Text Products from the National Weather Service

Satellite Imagery

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NRL Monterey Tropical Cyclone Homepage  

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RAMMB/CIRA Tropical Portal - satellite imagery, ocean heat content, intensity estimates, satellite-based wind field estimates, etc. 

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Tropical RAMSDIS Online   

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Digital Typhoon                         This is an interesting site for current and historic satellite info - utilizes visual and graphical data mining

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CIMSS Tropical Cyclones
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Objective Dvorak Technique for current storms

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QuikSCAT and SeaWinds Ocean Surface Wind Speeds (the 'manati' page)
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QuikSCAT Storm Page

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NRL QuikSCAT Basin Page

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TRMM Multiresource Page

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UW-CIMSS AMSU Homepage

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NOAA SSD Tropical Satellite Page

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Interactive Weather Satellite Imagery Viewers from NASA GHCC

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JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency) Satellite Imagery

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MODIS Image Gallery of Recent Storms

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MESO Tropics Page        nice "catch-all" site with tropical updates by Brian McNoldy
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Tropical Sectors    (SST, satellite loops, surface winds and vorticity)

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Tropical Hovmollers

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SERVIR - The Mesoamerican Regional Visualization and Monitoring System

SST - Ocean Heat Potential - Maximum Potential Intensity

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Sea Surface Temperatures
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Analyzed Operational SST Fields from NOAA/NESDIS (derived from satellite)    Contoured Fields    Anomalies

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SST from Climate Diagnostics Center (NOAA/CDC) Map Room

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Ocean Heat Potential
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Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential from NOAA/AOML

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Maximum Potential Intensity
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Maximum Potential Hurricane Intensity  - uses the Kerry Emanuel method, hosted at Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)

Surface Observations

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NCAR Rap Weather Surface Observations

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NOAA Buoy Observations

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CO-OPS Storm Surge Live Web Site

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Tide Data Station Selector

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Ship Locations and Tracker       

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Current and archived (up to 30 days) METAR surface observations from uswx.com

Aircraft Reconnaissance

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NHC/TPC Aircraft Reconnaissance Page        Most recent vortex message

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NHC's Recon Archive (http version) - messages are sorted by storm, 1989 - last year

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NHC's Recon Archive (ftp version) - messages are sorted by time, 2001 - current year

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My mirror of the NHC recon archive     By using this mirror of NHC's recon archive, you can spare their server during busy times. My mirror updates every half hour.

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All vortex messages for a specific storm    I have created a script which automatically collects all the vortex messages for a given storm and puts them in one file      

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Eye to Eye     Photo galleries of some of the storms flown by the Hurricane Hunters

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Real-time Trackers for Tropical Activity

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Brian McNoldy's Real-time Tropical Activity Tracker (CSU)   

Real-time Model Guidance Plots

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Jonathan Vigh's Model Guidance Page (CSU)                     Plots of the numerical model guidance: track and intensity for storms in the Atlantic and Pacific

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Model Guidance Plots from the South Florida Water Management District

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Model Guidance Plots from Kerry Emanuel (MIT)

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Model Guidance from the NWS Southern Regional Headquarters    Interactive tracker for Atlantic TCs, archive for 2005-2006

Model Forecast Fields

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Experimental forecast Tropical Cyclone Genesis Potential Fields from Florida State University (old site from Penn State is here)

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NCEP Model Analyses and Forecasts
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HWRF fields (nested domain)

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NCEP/GFS Ensemble Forecasts of TC Tracks

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WRF-ARW Model Runs from NCAR

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Output from the Kilo-Ensemble (2001 - 2003)    This was an outcome of my Masters research at CSU

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Seasonal Outlooks - Real-time Tropical Climate Monitoring

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Seasonal Forecast of Atlantic Hurricane Activity from Dr. William Gray's Tropical Meteorology Team

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NOAA Seasonal Atlantic Hurricane Outlook

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Atlantic Hurricane Potential Monitoring     an excellent site for monitoring current trends in the Atlantic -- from the NOAA's Climate Prediction Center

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Monthly/Seasonal Climate Composites from the Climate Diagnostics Center (NOAA)

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Time Series Plots of Climate Variables from the Climate Diagnostics Center (NOAA)

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TAO/Triton Data Display

Real-time Forecasts/Predictions of Tropical Cyclone Formation

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Experimental Tropical Cyclone Formation Probability Product    from CIRA    Genesis Climatology

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Probability of a Tropical Cyclone Forming on any Given Day in the Next Two Weeks    Experimental research product based on analysis and analysis of forecasts of equatorial waves - produced by Paul Roundy, University of Albany

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Tropical Cyclone Historical Information

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Historical Track Maps and Climatology
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Unisys Tropical Cyclone Tracks      Historical tracks for tropical cyclones worldwide 

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Historical Hurricane Tracks               from the NOAA Coastal Services Center

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United States Landfalling Hurricane Probability Project    an interactive GIS-landfall page by Phillip Klotzbach

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Atlantic Basin Climatology                 Find out the probability of getting a named storm, hurricane, or intense hurricane near your location

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Estimated Hurricane Return Periods   Find out how often, on average, a given location can expect to be hit by hurricanes of various strengths

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National Climate Data Center's Worldwide TC Monitoring    Summaries and basin statistics for recent TC's in the various basins around the world

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Southern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclones

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Historical TC Best Tracks
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Australia (scroll down to other sources of data and information)    Graphical browser of past storms

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Famous or Notable Landfalling Storms
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Hurricane History                                  A page on famous hurricanes from the National Hurricane Center's preparedness web site

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Summaries of Notable Hurricanes   from the National Climatic Data Center

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Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Data          Excellent resource showing the rainfall history of many U.S. landfallling hurricanes and tropical storms

 

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Hurricane Records and Rankings

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Lists of Tropical Cyclone Landfalls, ranked by intensity
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Chronological List of all U.S. Hurricane Landfalls (1851 - 2005)    maintained by Dr. Chris Landsea (NHC/HRD)
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New version which includes inland hurricane effects

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United States Major Hurricane Landfalls, ranked by Minimum Sea Level Pressure (MSLP)     (coming soon)

 

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Jonathan Vigh's Portal to Most Intense Tropical Cyclones by Basin, ranked by MSLP
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North Atlantic - All Recorded Category 4 and 5 Hurricanes (1851 - Current)                 UPDATED 09/04/07 to add Hurricane Felix 

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Eastern North Pacific - All Recorded Category 4 and 5 Hurricanes (1945 - Current)         (coming soon)

 

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Other lists of intense storms

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Wikipedia's List of Most Intense Storms on Record (Globally)

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Wikipedia's List of All Category 5 Atlantic Hurricanes  (sorted chronologically, by date in season, and by minimum central pressure)

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Wikipedia's List of All Category 5 Eastern and Central Pacific Hurricanes

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HRD's list of all North Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes, ranked by windspeed                     last updated in 2003

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HRD's list of all Eastern North Pacfic tropical storms and hurricanes, ranked by windspeed        last updated in 2003

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Other Tools and Resources

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Wikipedia Tropical Cyclone Portal    This online encyclopedia is maintained by an enthusiastic user community and contains many articles about tropical cyclones and current and past storms.

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NTC Calculator                                     Calculate 'net tropical cyclone' activity, and compare to past seasons -- from Brian McNoldy's site

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Tropical Cyclone FAQ                         Extremely useful, informative, and expansive FAQ on hurricanes and tropical storms

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Hurricane satellite movies                  Some cool '3D' movies of hurricanes

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Story of a penetration into the eye of Hurricane Hugo    This is certainly one of the most harrowing flights ever made into a hurricane

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Global Guide to Tropical Cyclone Forecasting    A technical resource on TC forecasting, provided online at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre

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WMO Tropical Cyclone Programme Homepage    The United Nations World Meteorological Programme's effort for the global tropical cyclone problem
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WMO Tropical Cyclone Programme Publications

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Hurricane Watch Net    An amateur radio net to facilitate communications into and out of hurricane-affected areas

Hurricane Awareness and Preparedness

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The National Hurricane Center's Preparedness Web Page    Extremely useful and informative -- several pages from this site are linked below since they are so useful
bullet Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale            Find out the difference between a Category 1 storm and a Category 5 storm
bullet Interactive SSHS from the Associated Press
bulletCoastal Risk Atlas                                     From the NOAA National Coastal Data Development Center
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High Wind Risk Areas                              Find out how far inland the winds are likely to penetrate

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Track and Intensity Errors                      This page explains the size of the average track and intensity error and how this uncertainty relates to size of warning areas   

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Recent Notable Landfalling Storms

I closely follow the Atlantic hurricane seasons, and to some extent tropical cyclones worldwide. For storms which end up having a large U.S. impact, I may write up a summary of the impacts or archive some of the raw surface obs. Or I may just provide some links to other interesting content specific to that storm such as satellite loops, radar loops, etc. The National Hurricane Center writes up excellent post-season storm summaries and a community-led encyclopedia called Wikipedia often has a treasure trove of interesting information about various storms.

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Hurricanes of 2005 Summary Page        
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Hurricane Katrina      

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Hurricane Rita             

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Hurricane Wilma         

 

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Hurricanes of 2004 Summary Page

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Hurricane Alex             

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Hurricane Charley        

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Hurricane Frances       

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Hurricane Ivan              

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Hurricane Jeanne        

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