Hurricanes & tropical cyclones
NHC's HURDAT2 best tracks in Python: mapping hurricane seasons, accumulated cyclone energy, US landfalls, rapid intensification, wind radii and the coordinate and record-type traps.
HURDAT2 is the National Hurricane Center's best-track record of every Atlantic tropical cyclone since 1851, and of eastern and central Pacific storms since 1949: a position, wind and pressure every six hours, re-analysed after each season. The September 2026 release holds 1,988 Atlantic storms, through Melissa's 165-kt peak in October 2025.
The guides here parse the file, map the 2025 season by category, score seasons with accumulated cyclone energy, count US landfalls, find rapid intensification and draw wind fields from the quadrant radii, and explain why the early record undercounts storms. Three pages deal with the traps: hemisphere letters instead of signs, tracks that wrap at 180 degrees, and landfall rows that inflate any sum over time.
🧭 Start with the concepts
The ideas the how-to guides below assume you already have.
⚙️ Then do the task
Step-by-step walkthroughs with code you can copy and adapt.
- How to Map a Hurricane Track from IBTrACS in Python
- How to Animate a Hurricane Track in Python
- How to Read HURDAT2 Hurricane Best Tracks in Python
- How to Map a Hurricane Season's Tracks Coloured by Intensity
- How to Count US Hurricane Landfalls by State and Category
- How to Find Rapid Intensification in Hurricane Best Tracks
Show every how-to guide in this topic
🔧 When it breaks
The errors this topic produces, with the cause explained rather than just the command.
Related topics
Subjects that keep coming up alongside this one, most overlap first.