The data consist of tropical cyclone tracks through the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico from 1995 to 2005. Only ``named'' storms, those which reached tropical storm status or stronger, are included.
The data originated from the National Hurricane Center's archive of Tropical Cyclone Reports ( http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastall.shtml). From the NHC, the reports "contain comprehensive information on each tropical cyclone, including synoptic history, meteorological statistics, casualties and damages, and the post-analysis best track (six-hourly positions and intensities)."
This dataset is taken from the post-analysis best track information, which are presented in tabular form in the Tropical Cyclone Reports and came in a variety of electronic formats (PDF, HTML and Microsoft Word documents). The best track tables were then copied to text files and parsed into the comma-separated format in which they currently reside.
The variables are as follows:
Name: Storm Name
Year: Year of report
Month: Month of report
Day: Day of report (day of the month)
Hour: Hour of report (0, 6, 12 or 18 in UTC time)
Latitude: Latitude of the storm's center (degrees North)
Longitude: Longitude of the storm's center (degrees West)
Pressure: Air pressure at the storm's center (millibars)
Wind: Storm's maximum sustained wind speed (knots or nautical miles per hour)
Type: Storm classification (Tropical Depression, Tropical Storm, Hurricane,
Extratropical)
SeasDay: Day of the hurricane season (days since June 1)
The Tropical Cyclone Reports had a variety of storm type designations and there appeared to be no consistent naming convention for cyclones that were not hurricanes, tropical depressions, or tropical storms. Many of these designations have been combined into the "Extratropical" category in this dataset.
This data was put together by Jon Hobbs, a PhD student at Iowa State. Thanks Jon!
data(stormtracks)A data frame with 5519 rows and 24 variables