Historical Hurricane Tracks in Contiguous United States (1851-2024) by University of Wisconsin-Madison

This map product visualizes the tracks of historical hurricanes in contiguous U.S. from 1851 to 2024. It is a continuation of my previous award-winning map Visualizing Historical Hurricanes in Continuous U.S. (https://cartoguophy.com/maps/historical_hurricanes.html), with revised legend design and updated dataset.

With all the hurricane tracks’ intensity displayed in different color-width combination, as illustrated in the legend, the storm category (Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind) is intuitively visualized at corresponding location of tracks. Storms since 2020 have full opacity, and various transparency is applied to the older ones according to the year, imitating the fading out history, while storms before 1970 are universally grayed out with only 25% opacity. As for the label typography, bold text illustrates major hurricanes (category-3 and above); hurricanes since 2000 are labeled on the ocean, and those before are labeled on the land, including some named storms.

Additionally, auxiliary elements (graticule, country boundary, state boundary, hillshading, urban area) and graphic designs are deployed for visual legibility and cartographic aesthetics.

The major data source is the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) during 1851 - 2024, providing the location and intensity for global tropical cyclones. Additional data sources include U.S. Census Bureau, ArcGIS Online, and Esri’s World Ocean Basemap and Light Gray Basemap.