National Hurricane Center a Vital Resource

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) of the United States National Weather Service provides a vital service for residents of Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico coastal regions subject to hurricanes. The NHC also serves the Eastern Pacific. Figure 1 shows the home page for the National Hurricane Center.

NHC online resources include status reports on tropical depressions and named tropical storms and hurricanes. Besides narrative bulletins, the NHC provides a host of helpful visualizations, including strike probabilities and wind speeds.

The NHC features many links, including one to NOAA's Satellite Services Division of the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service .

The NHC site also includes an archive of status reports, forecasts, discussions and graphics of prior storms.

Figure 2 shows an archived strike forecast graphic for Hurricane Katrina at 1:00 PM Central Daylight Time on 28 August 2005. Also available are archived tables of strike probabilities. These provide an important resource for citizen scientists interested in tracking the accuracy of NHC forecasts and comparing them with other forecasts.

Forrest M. Mims III