Storm Tracks is a visualizer for tropical storms and hurricanes (tropical cyclones). The National Hurricane Center provides forecasts for tropical cyclones using Nonhomogeneous Gaussian regression. The Global Forecast System (GFS) model is run 4 times daily, and is used to make these forecasts. I sourced the raw tropical cyclone track data from the GFS and other models from the NCEP/EMC Cyclone Tracks Page. Since weather modelling is not a normal probabilistic model, and instead is a chaotic system Lorenz system. Weather is inherently predictable, however, our ability to predict weather is limited by our ability to understand the initial conditions. I created this visualization to show the models which are used to turn a deterministic weather model into a probabilistic one.
This visualization only shows tropical cyclones, and does not show any other storms. Other storms are included in the models sourced from NOAA, however, during peak storm season the map would be covered with storm tracks and it would be unreadable. Since tropical cyclones have the most “appeal” I opted only to show those. If there are none at the current time, nothing will be shown, selecting a date from September is your best bet for seeing storm plots.
I was motivated to create this visualization since I have long had an interest in weather (one of my early childhood career aspirations was to be a TV Meteorologist, but I don't think I have the personality for it), and I have had an interest in Chaos Theory since taking a course and giving a talk on it when I was in college. I decided that this was the perfect project which meshes with my interest in GIS and programming. I am, however, not very knowledgeable in meteorology, chaos theory, GIS, or web development, and I am happy to receive any feedback from the audience. Please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn if you have any questions, comments, or improvements.
Special thanks to Catherine Grillo for helping me with the design :)