Tracking Hurricanes

Have your students track hurricanes in the same manner the pros do. 

Print out tracking maps from the National Hurricane Center. 

Then head to the Unisys Weather: Hurricane Data site.  Click on a year and then scroll down the page to find tracking data for each individual storm.  The data can be copied and pasted into a Word document, or printed from the site. 

Assign each student a different storm to track.  Plot each storm, using different colors to represent the category at that location. 


Here's an example of what the data looks like (the formatting is a little better on the site).

Date: 07-12 SEP 2009

 Hurricane-3 FRED

ADV LAT LON TIME WIND PR STAT
1 12.50 -24.50 09/07/21Z 30 1005 TROPICAL DEPRESSION
2 11.80 -26.30 09/08/03Z 35 1004 TROPICAL STORM
3 11.80 -27.30 09/08/09Z 45 1000 TROPICAL STORM
4 11.90 -28.60 09/08/15Z 55 994 TROPICAL STORM
5 12.10 -29.80 09/08/21Z 60 990 TROPICAL STORM
6 12.60 -30.60 09/09/03Z 65 987 HURRICANE-1
7 13.20 -31.70 09/09/09Z 90 970 HURRICANE-2
8 13.90 -32.40 09/09/15Z 105 958 HURRICANE-3
9 14.80 -33.30 09/09/21Z 100 960 HURRICANE-3
10 15.30 -33.70 09/10/03Z 90 965 HURRICANE-2
11 15.90 -34.60 09/10/09Z 90 970 HURRICANE-2
12 16.80 -35.10 09/10/15Z 85 974 HURRICANE-2
13 17.30 -35.10 09/10/21Z 80 975 HURRICANE-1
14 17.40 -35.10 09/11/03Z 75 980 HURRICANE-1
15 17.70 -35.10 09/11/09Z 75 980 HURRICANE-1
16 18.00 -35.00 09/11/15Z 70 983 HURRICANE-1
17 18.10 -34.60 09/11/21Z 60 987 TROPICAL STORM
18 18.00 -33.60 09/12/03Z 50 998 TROPICAL STORM
19 17.80 -33.60 09/12/09Z 40 1002 TROPICAL STORM
20 17.50 -33.70 09/12/15Z 35 1002 TROPICAL STORM
21 17.70 -33.70 09/12/21Z 30 1005 TROPICAL DEPRESSION

And the plot would resemble this: