Publishing a hurricane forecast
Moments · An active storm from the tracker: NHC's position, intensity and track, drawn. Your landfall window, where, how strong and how sure. Locks when the window opens.
Landfall
Where
Your note
What opens
Every active storm on the hurricane tracker has a "Publish your forecast" link. The form opens with the National Hurricane Center's latest advisory: the observed position, the intensity, and the forecast track drawn point by point - the positions NHC actually issued, not a cone.
The form opens the moment a storm forms and closes when it dissipates. Off season, there is nothing to open.
What you add, in order
Landfall - makes landfall or stays at sea.
The window and where - the earliest and latest time you expect it ashore, and the stretch of coast: "Galveston to Cameron". Your window is drawn on NHC's track as the part of the line that falls inside it.
Intensity - at landfall, or the peak if it stays at sea: tropical storm through category 5.
How sure - possible, likely, very likely.
Your note - the steering, the ridge, the trough, why you differ if you do.
When it locks
When your landfall window opens - or, for a storm you have at sea, at the last point on NHC's track. Edit until then.
The mark
Against NHC's forecast intensity along the track: agrees, stronger, softer, differs. NHC does not state a landfall, so the landfall call is yours alone and is not marked.
Where it appears
On the storm's page under NHC's track, for everyone watching it; on your page; in your followers' email. The share image is the track with your window on it.