Since hurricane season is bearing down on us and already causing more problems, I have been back on Stormpulse.com and checking out all the new features they have. The first one is the ability to embed their hurricane tracking maps into other websites. As you can see below we have Hanna who – as of this post – is currently headed toward the southeastern coastline and should make landfall within 40 hours or so.
Whats also new (to me) is the Forecast Models and Wind Probabilities switches on the upper right. So if you are one of the brave souls traveling through Hurricane Alley during peak time you can see the forecasted wind speed probabilities for cities that could be affected. Forecast Models shows different weather models and their forecasts, interesting if you are into that stuff.
Now if you turn on the Wind Probabilities switch you will see a bunch of icons in the storm’s path, clicking on any one of these will show you a box containing the total chances of what kind of wind speeds you could expect, you can dig even further by clicking on the “Chance by Day” button which shows you the upcoming probable wind speeds for the next 5 days.
Being able to see this type of information is helpful both to the last minute traveler – who can see what cities might be impacted and thus avoid potential problems; or for someone who has already booked a trip so they can be better prepared to deal with any potential delays or cancellations due to weather. Hopefully those who already booked have bought travel insurance(we’ll just assume they are smart travelers;), since buying insurance while its foreseeable that the storm will cause them a delay or cancellation will most likely not be covered. The important word here is “foreseeable” since all policies only cover unforeseeable events(don’t be fooled by all this “named event” talk – no policy has a “named event” clause – it has to do with whether it was a foreseeable event).