Help
This page describes how to use the interactive map. For help with the Stormpulse API, please read our API page.
The text in this document may be copied and re-used freely on your own site/blog.
How To Use the Interactive Map
By default, the interactive tracking map will show a storm’s current center location and forecasted positions based on the latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center.
The box at the bottom of the map shows information for a selected point along the storm’s path. By default, this will show the current center location for the storm, as well as maximum sustained wind speed, pressure, and movement. The advisory number is shown next to the name of the storm. Abbreviations next to the storm name indicate the type of tropical cyclone–”T.D.” (Tropical Depression), “T.S.” (Tropical Storm), and “Hurr.” (Hurricane).
Zooming is done through the plus (+) and minus (-) controls in the top-left corner.
To pan, click and drag the map, or click the arrows along the edges of the map.
A legend in the top-right corner shows the color key for different categories of tropical cyclones. The colors go from white for a TD (Tropical Depression) to red for an H5 (Major Hurricane, Category 5). A scale beneath the legend correlates distance in miles with distance on your computer screen.
A list of display options in the top-right-hand corner allows you to selectively add layers to the map. ‘Storm History‘ will show the storm’s entire path. When available, ‘Clouds‘ will load the latest available global cloud layer.
Clicking ‘More‘ will bring up Wind Fields, Ocean Buoys, Map Grid, and Map Labels. Wind Fields will hide or show the reach of the storm’s winds, displayed as circles around the selected point. These circles represent Tropical Depression force (white), Storm force (yellow), and Hurricane force (orange) winds.
The Ocean Buoys option will request and load the latest observations sourced from the National Data Buoy Center. This may take a moment depending on your internet connection speed. Ocean buoys appear as blue boxes that can be clicked for more details. Land-based weather stations appear as red boxes that can also be clicked for the latest observations from that location.
The Map Grid option will hide and show latitude and longitude lines, including the equator and tropics.
The Map Labels option will hide and show labels for cities, countries, continents, oceans, and seas.
32 comments so far
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[...] Help [...]
On the Current Atlantic Activity – Hurricane Season Tracking Map, can anyone explain the different circular boundary configurations that appear when the time intervals points along the storm projected path are clicked. The current location’s time point is always completely circular, that’s obviously understandable. But the future points are usually not complete circles and of different depths and some quarter circle portions absent.
Hi there,
where can I switch to units which are mor familiar to the world outside US, like km instead of miles?
@Fred:
We plan to add the explanation for this to the site soon. In the
meantime, here’s a really good explanation from Skeetobite Weather:
http://www.skeetobiteweather.com/windfield.asp
The reason that the circles are round sometimes and not round other
times … when the NHC issues a Public Advisory, it only gives
sufficient data to show the wind fields in a large circle. However,
when they issue a Forecast Advisory (as you see for the ‘cone’), they
issue data such that the quadrants can be drawn according to their
observations.
Hopefully that makes it a bit clearer. We will address this soon.
Thanks for taking the time to write.
@heavyfuel:
There is currently no way to switch to Metric. However, this may appear in a future release. Thank you for your suggestion.
Hi. I just found my new favorite website for tracking hurricanes. This is an amazing site. One question, i see you have no horizontal length restriction on the map size (which is great), but there appears to be a vertical length restriction on the map. Any chance the site can remove the restriction? I have a 2×2 array of 20″ monitors acting as one desktop and this looks amazing stretched across 2 of them, but would look even more spectacular if i could stretch the site to all 4 of them. Thanks!!
What are the red boxes next to the storm names on the right side? For instance, Ike is a Cat 3 and has two red boxes; the other storms have one.
Superb website! I’m learning a lot, and it’s intensely valuable information. I feel like Max Mayfield.
But I can’t translate the abbreviations in the forecast models; e.g., CLPS, NOGAPS, AVNO, BAMM, etc. Please point me in the right direction on this one. (Max would know, I know.)
Thanks!
First, wonderful and very useful site.
An enhancement suggestion: It would be nice if we could add a Lat/Lon to the URL, and the Lat/Lon point would be marked on the map and could be used to measure how far from a point on the storm track path to that point.
Also, I realize that the points come from the NHC, but having them 12 hours apart often doesn’t help in measuring from some place on the track line near you. Example, if two points are 12 hours apart and you live about mid-way between the two, it isn’t very useful to click one of the points and have it tell you that one point is 120 miles away, then click the next point on the track and have it tell you that is 130 miles away. I’d like to be able to click any place on the track line (perhaps a right-click), not just the NHC points, and have it anchor at that point and allow you to move the other end of the line around so you can make measurements to other points on the map.
I can’t get it to display on a VISTA computer. Using IE7, and yes I have the latewst Flash installed…. and it does not display. Works AOK on the Win XP computers.
Got it to work on VISTA … Had to uninstall existing Adobe Flash, and reinstall… now works AOK. Nice tracking site.
Hi all,
Could use a little help. Love this site and used it for the first time this last week. Somehow I have changed a setting (perhaps in my own security) so that now I can access the site but can’t get the tracking maps. In my settings java and java script ate enabled, cookies are set to accept and no script is set to allow. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Paul
Is there a mobile or wap site for Blackberry viewing?
Thanks!
I have tried to view your site on my SONY VAIO laptop running Windows 2000, Service Pack 4. Each time I bring up your site, it tells me it needs Flash Version 8 or higher to run, Click Here to Download. I have downloaded, rebooted, and reentered the site and it still the same problem.
Any thoughts?
How can I see the land masses? I have the cities and track of the storm, but the background is black.
GREAT website. A friend just recommended last night.
Is there a way to overlay the path of a previous storm to that of a current storm? I was trying to see how a current storm might impact us knowing how a previous storm did.
I am having the same trouble as Mary…Land masses don’t show, but I see the labels and the storm track. I have tried updating the flash but nothing is working. I am able to view the whole thing on my home computer just fine. I’ve tried viewing on Firefox as well as IE…
Anyone know if stormpulse will have a fully operational version for i-phone. Obviously Flash 8 can’t be downloaded.
We were having the black background problem with some of our customers and found that it was because they had a whitelist firewall and we had to add stormpulse.s3.amazonaws.com to our whitelist.
Hi,
could wmode = “transparent” or
wmode = “opaque’
in their setup of the flash control.
so my menu can work thanks Beau
Woul like to have you on our web site. Will you send me a key?Than you
I would love to put your map on my site. Could you send me a key, please? I emailed Friday, May 8th.
Thanks,
John Sacrey
I used to be able to see the maps fine until the site was updated. Now the entire site loads, but the map area is blank. I have the latest flash plugin. If there is a fix I would appreciate it. I love the site, living in Florida and all.
We worked and installed a fix that seems to have cured this for the vast majority of those that had been experiencing it. Please clear all of your browser cache and try again, and let us know if the problem persists.
The milage shown from a city to the storm seems to be wrong.
Am I doing something wrong ? This is a very nice site and it seems to work well. I enjoy it very much and use it all of the time. Thanks, Jack
Certainly possible. Can you give us an example?
I can’t open on my iPhone. Are you working on an app?
iPhone app is a 2010 thing at best. Thanks for checking us out though.
Awesome…..simply awesome. Thank you Matthew!!
From us: you’re welcome. :-)
Is there anyway to close the box at the bottom of the map that shows the current status of the current/hi-lighted storm? Not only is this site great for weather-tracking, it’s a great geography teacher, but the box at the bottom impedes the full view when placed on a large screen in the classroom. Same goes for the LEGEND box, although that one’s not as hindering as the long box at the bottom. Thanks
Can’t do this yet, but I appreciate the idea. Probably need to keep it simple for the most common user, but perhaps a keyboard shortcut would make sense to hide all of the navigation? Hmm…