The data behind the tracks

The map is built from NOAA’s International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS), version 4r01. It combines tropical cyclone records from multiple reporting agencies.

Archive coverage

1950 onward

Latest recorded observation

2026-09-10 00:00 UTC

Source retrieved

2026-09-10

Unique tracked systems

8,307

Where the records come from

NOAA NCEI’s IBTrACS project supplies the archive. The field documentation explains its variables. World boundaries come from public-domain Natural Earth data, packaged through world-atlas.

Hurricanes Mapped is an independent visualization. NOAA and the contributing agencies produce the observations; this site processes and displays them.

How tracks are processed

We retain primary tracks from 1 January 1950 onward, exclude spur tracks, deduplicate identical storm-ID/time reports, and preserve missing values. Provisional primary tracks remain visible and labeled on the map. One system has one IBTrACS identifier even when it appears in multiple calendar-year files.

Positions use IBTrACS latitude and longitude. Colors use USA_SSHS. Wind uses USA_WIND where available, with WMO_WIND as a labeled fallback; the fallback does not create a US category. Pressure uses USA_PRES, then WMO_PRES, with the source retained. See the track-reading guide for playback and radius behavior.

Refresh time is not observation time

The latest observation timestamp above is the endpoint of this published archive. Checking NOAA for an update does not create newer observations. New systems appear only when added to IBTrACS, and recent records may later change. Current forecast links are separate, expire when stale, and are available only for supported NHC/CPHC basins.

What this archive cannot establish by itself

Reporting coverage, instruments, analysis methods, and wind conventions have changed. Pre-satellite observations are especially incomplete. A raw count of archive entries is not a homogeneous climate indicator or evidence that a change was caused by warming. Read our climate page for the chart definitions and research context.

Download and cite

The machine-readable manifest records source URL, checksum, retrieval time, coverage, and point schema. The storm index lists unique systems. Year files are available from the map’s download link. Cross-year records must be deduplicated by ID when combining those files.

Original dataset citation: Gahtan et al. (2024), International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) Project, Version 4r01, NOAA NCEI. doi:10.25921/82ty-9e16. Project description: Knapp et al. (2010), BAMS 91, 363–376. Cite NOAA as the data producer and this site as the visualization.