Our model site displays National Hurricane Center (NHC) model data in Google Maps and Google Earth for active storms and areas of investigation. (Areas of investigation are designated as invests with numbers from 90 to 99.) You can also view model wind and pressure data, when available, in Adobe Flash diagrams. All best track and model data is archived so you can view historic data as well. Other features of our model system include NHC model error, a center fix system containing raw center fixes by satellite and other sources and model data for the East and Central Pacific basins. For active Atlantic storms, links to each storm's data will appear at the top of most of the pages on our site.
If you have the free program
Google Earth, you can access all model data in the Atlantic Basin by saving the Google Earth file below:
This file will allow you to view the latest model data when it is available for active storms and areas of investigation. NHC best track, model and fix data come from the
Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecasting (ATCF) system. Raw ATCF data is downloaded
here from the NHC's FTP server and is processed by our site to be displayed visually when new data is available.
For a nice background to display Google Earth data on, click
here for a NASA Blue Marble layer for Google Earth. If you would like a lower quality version, with the image embedded within the file, click
here (5.09mb) to download it. The overlay is from August 2004. It combines higher quality imagery from
here, which has been resized, that we replaced in the image overlay
here, which contained lower quality imagery. Please note, this overlay may crash Google Earth if you do not have sufficient memory. Please save all the work on your computer before opening it.
For information about other basins, visit
Tropical Globe.