# 5636
Ready.gov reminds us that there are three important steps to preparedness.
Luckily the third step – staying informed – gets easier every year as the number of online resources for tracking severe weather improves.
Since the 2011 Atlantic Tropical Storm Season has begun, today I’ve a list of some of my favorite online Hurricane resources. Some of these are `official government’ portals of information, while others are run by hurricane and severe weather enthusiasts.
While some very good information and analysis can be had through non-official channels on the internet, you should only rely on local emergency management officials, the National Hurricane Center, and the National Weather Service for:
- forecasts
- warnings
- evacuation recommendations.
The first stop on our list is the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida. These are the real experts, and the only ones you should rely on to track and forecast the storm.
Last year there were some significant changes in how the NHC will advise us on hurricanes. Some of the (excerpted) highlights include:
Watches and warnings for tropical storms and hurricanes along threatened coastal areas will be issued 12 hours earlier than in previous years.
- Tropical storm watches will be issued when tropical storm conditions are possible along the coast within 48 hours.
- Tropical storm warnings will be issued when those conditions are expected within 36 hours. Similar increases in lead-time will apply to hurricane watches and warnings.
The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale will become operational. The scale keeps the same wind speed ranges as the original Saffir-Simpson Scale for each of the five hurricane categories, but no longer ties specific storm surge and flooding effects to each category.
The size of the tropical cyclone forecast cone will be adjusted.
The cone represents the probable track of the center of a tropical cyclone, and is formed by enclosing the area swept out by a set of imaginary circles placed along the forecast track (at 12, 24, 36 hours, etc.). The size of each circle is set so that two-thirds of historical official forecast errors over a 5-year sample fall within the circle.
The circle radii defining the cones in 2010 for the Atlantic and eastern North Pacific basins are given in the table below.
The second official information source you should have bookmarked is you local Office of Emergency Management. Here you’ll be able to access local warnings, flood maps and evacuation information.
To find it, you can Google or Yahoo search with your county/parish name and the words `Emergency Management’. Below you’ll find a screenshot of the entry page to my county’s page.
If you are on Twitter, you should also follow @FEMA, @CraigatFEMA, @NHC_Atlantic, @NHC_Pacific and @ReadydotGov.
The NOAA’s NWS National Hurricane Center in Miami also has a Facebook page, where you can keep up with the latest tropical developments.
For those who like to look at satellite imagery (and who doesn’t?), you’ll find a treasure trove of continually updated photos and movie loops at NOAA’s Satellite Imagery page.
Beyond the official channels there are resources for those who wish to follow these storm more closely, to participate in online discussions, or who would like independent assessments of storm tracks or movement.
These are not substitutes for the National Hurricane Center’s forecasts or your local office of Emergency Management advisories.
And while some of these sites have some very talented and knowledgeable amateur meteorologists, until you know the players and their track records, you really don’t know who is worth listening to, and who isn’t.
You can learn a lot from the online Hurricane discussion forums, but Caveat Lector when it comes to forecasts and predictions.
The first stop on the unofficial tour is Weather Underground’s Tropical weather page. This is an extremely comprehensive website, and a good source of global weather information. Here you’ll alos find Dr. Jeff Masters (a co-founder of Weather Underground), who writes his well respected WunderBlog.
For those who like to `look under the hood’, my hometown (Tampa Bay) Fox TV station has a terrific hurricane page, with access to numerous (animated) hurricane forecast models.
For hurricane geeks, this is about as close to weather nirvana as you can get.
While there are dozens of other hurricane resource and tracking/discussion sites out there, I’ll just mention a couple I’ve used in the past.
First is Hurricane City, which has been around since 1997, and boasts an active discussion board, up-to-date NHC advisories, and frequent live video broadcasts during the hurricane season via their hurricane TV channel.
And then there’s storm chaser Mark Sudduth’s Hurricanetrack.com, which also features live video, often from inside the storm.
Both of these sites have free access and paid subscription access levels. I offer these as examples of a genre, but without specific recommendation. Their usefulness to you will depend, quite frankly, upon your level of hurricane geekiness. They aren’t for everyone.
As hurricane season ramps up, you can expect a fair amount of coverage in this blog as well.
When a storm threatens a specific region of the coast, I’ll try to provide local resources that you can monitor including radio, TV, and emergency service scanner feeds.
In the meantime, now is the time to get your disaster preparations in order. Here is some of the information provided by the National Hurricane Center on preparedness.
"Preventing the loss of life and minimizing the damage to property from hurricanes are responsibilities that are shared by all
Throughout this Web site, information has been provided regarding actions that you can take based on specific hurricane hazards. The most important thing that you can do is to be informed and prepared. Disaster prevention includes both being prepared as well as reducing damages (mitigation).
Disaster Prevention should include:
