Topic: Historical Tropical Cyclone Track Maps

[Michael Bath]

Hi all,

I've developed a new Google Maps based interface for my tropical cyclones track map webpages. This was prompted by some pretty extensive changes to the BoM database recently.

The pages have better navigation to jump between seasons and individual cyclones, plus more information including the actual data used to draw the maps. And using Google Maps means you change the background, zoom and move the track to suit your needs.

I'm after any suggestions and feedback before I incorporate this into my main historical cyclones pages. I'll also have the complete JTWC best tracks soon as well - 1,869 SH events and counting!

Please note the season summary maps load a lot quicker on Firefox than IE7.

The new stuff is available from here:

http://australiasevereweather.com/tropical_cyclones/

Regards, Michael

[Colin Maitland]

Absolutely brilliant, just playing around with it, going through the cyclones I recalled and where they were, it is great to track them from this site, it is brilliant, you don't have to keep jumping from site to site. This is a great forum.

[Richary]

Looks like a lot of work has gone into that Michael, looks great. And I have coded similar stuff into kml files before (monitoring changing signal strengths of a 3G signal along a path) so I know what a pain in the neck it can be (why can't they use the same colour codes as html? Grrrr).

Loading nice and fast in Firefox here :-)

[Michael Bath]

All the JTWC maps are available now - 1944/45 to 1906/07 season maps, plus 1,796 individual track maps !!

http://australiasevereweather.com/tropical_cyclones/

Please advise if you spot an errors, or have suggestions.

thanks, Michael

[Mike]

Kudos for spending so much time creating this, I've been glued to it for a while playing around and the Google overlay is a brilliant concept.  Thanks for your tireless work and innovations.

[JRees]

It looks really good and will be very usefull - Also  Michael the 2007-08 JTWC Besttrack is now up so you may wish to add it to your maps http://metocph.nmci.navy.mil/jtwc/best_tracks/2008/2008s-bsh/

[Michael Bath]

Ah, excellent - will add that next week. Been a busy week with the floods so haven't done any more work on it. However, access to the new maps is now from the normal cyclones index page:

http://australiasevereweather.com/cyclones/

regards, Michael

[Michael Bath]

Thanks to everyone who contacted me about the maps.

This all started back in 1987 when I first plotted BoM dataset maps on paper - thanks to inspiration from a couple of big NE NSW floods. In 1996 I scanned those and put them on the early version of Australia Severe Weather website.

I found some basic TC plotting software and for the next several years that's what I've used. Despite searching around the net I never found another suitable and/or better program which included the Australian region and all the best track databases. Latter versions of the program made plotting even more painful.

Then three weeks ago I had an idea to try using Google Maps. Anyway I've pretty much got it the way I envisioned. Please use the regular URL to access the maps:

http://australiasevereweather.com/cyclones/

BoM data is 1906/07 to 2006/07 (though some of that last season is missing). Summary list here:

http://australiasevereweather.com/cyclones/summary_bom.htm

JTWC data is 1944/94 to 2007/08 with the summary list here:

http://australiasevereweather.com/cyclones/summary_jtwc.htm


Season summary and individual maps based on operational data is also available 2003/04 to date.

I've added Google Map options to toggle the map markers, date labels and lat/long grid as sometimes you want to see a clean map - ie. just the track.

If you spot any bugs or have any other suggestions please email me: [email protected]

Regards, Michael

[Michael Bath]

Operational data and maps are now complete to the end of April 2009

http://australiasevereweather.com/cyclones/