Geodataset Name:       TROPC_NOV08
Geodataset Type:       SHAPEFILE
Geodataset Feature:    Polyline
Feature Count:         38837

DATA SOURCE(S):                    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Hurricane Center
SCALE OF ORIGINAL SOURCE MAPS:     Unknown
GEODATASET EXTENT:                 North Atlantic

PUBLICATION DATE:                  200905
TIME PERIOD OF CONTENT:            Begin Date: 18510625    End Date: 20081114
DOWNLOAD LINK:                     http://www.fgdl.org/metadataexplorer/explorer.jsp

FEATURE ATTRIBUTE TABLES:

Datafile Name: TROPC_NOV08.DBF

FEATURE ATTRIBUTE TABLES CODES AND VALUES:

Item	Item Description
OBJECTID	Internal feature number.
Shape	The representation of the entity in the data. PolyLine = 1-dimensional element that may or may not surround a 2-dimensional element.
Year	The year of the storm advisory, in the format yyyy. Advisories are issued for storms that have attained at least tropical depression status, and are issued every 6 hours, at 0000, 0600, 1200, and 1800 hours. Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center advisories are discontinued once a storm makes landfall and all storm warnings are dropped, or when the wind speed drops below 30 knots or 35 mph. The records for each date are listed in order.
Month	The month of the storm advisory. Advisories are issued for storms that have attained at least tropical depression status, and are issued every 6 hours, at 0000, 0600, 1200, and 1800 hours. Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center advisories are discontinued once a storm makes landfall and all storm warnings are dropped, or when the wind speed drops below 30 knots or 35 mph. The records for each date are listed in order.
Day	The day of the storm advisory. Advisories are issued for storms that have attained at least tropical depression status, and are issued every 6 hours, at 0000, 0600, 1200, and 1800 hours. Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center advisories are discontinued once a storm makes landfall and all storm warnings are dropped, or when the wind speed drops below 30 knots or 35 mph. The records for each date are listed in order.
Ad_Time	The storm advisory time. Times are in Zulu (a.k.a., Universal Time-UTC, Greenwich Mean Time-GMT) starting with 0000Z and ending with 1800Z.
Btid	The unique event identifier. Identifiers are sequential, starting with 1 in June, 1851 and ending with 1410 in November, 2008.
Name	The given name of a storm. Storms are named if they are true tropical storms and attain a sustained wind speed of at least 39 mph. Not Named = There is no given name for the storm. Prior to 1950 storms were not named. Subtrop = There is no given name for the storm because it was classified as a subtropical depression or subtropical storm. Subtrop1 = There is no given name for the storm because it was classified as a subtropical depression or subtropical storm. Subtrop1 is the first subtropical cyclone for a given year. A storm may initially be identified as Subtrop1 but then be given a name if it develops into a tropical storm; in this case there will be no storm identified as Subtrop1 for the year even though there may be a storm identified as Subtrop2. Subtrop2 = There is no given name for the storm because it was classified as a subtropical depression or subtropical storm. Subtrop2 is the second subtropical cyclone for a given year. A storm may initially be identified as Subtrop2 but then be given a name if it develops into a tropical storm; in this case there will be no storm identified as Subtrop2 for the year even though there may be a storm identified as Subtrop3. Subtrop3 = There is no given name for the storm because it was classified as a subtropical depression or subtropical storm. Subtrop3 is the third subtropical cyclone for a given year. A storm may initially be identified as Subtrop3 but then be given a name if it develops into a tropical storm; in this case there will be no storm identified as Subtrop3 for the year even though there may be a storm identified as Subtrop4. Subtrop4 = There is no given name for the storm because it was classified as a subtropical depression or subtropical storm. Subtrop4 is the fourth subtropical cyclone for a given year. A storm may initially be identified as Subtrop4 but then be given a name if it develops into a tropical storm; in this case there will be no storm identified as Subtrop4 for the year. Unnamed = Storms from 1950 or later may be unnamed if they were not recognized as tropical storms or hurricanes at the time of their occurrence.
LONG_	No description
Lat	The latitude measurement of the storm's center, in tenths of decimal degrees.
Wind_kts	The measured or estimated windspeed at the time of the advisory, in whole knots.
Pressure	The measured or estimated barometric pressure at the time of the advisory, in millibars. A value of 0 indicates the barometric pressure is unknown.
Cat	The intensity classification of the storm. Hurricanes are classified according to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. D = The storm was classified as a tropical disturbance at the time of the advisory. A tropical disturbance is a discrete tropical weather system of apparently organized convection (i.e. thunderstorm activity), which is generally 100 to 300 nautical miles in diameter. It originates in the tropics or subtropics, has a nonfrontal migratory character, and maintains its identity for 24 hours or more. It does not necessarily exhibit circulation, but may develop into a tropical cyclone. E = The storm was classified as Extratropical at the time of the advisory. Extratropical is a term used in advisories and tropical summaries to indicate that a cyclone has lost its tropical characteristics. The term implies both that the cyclone has moved out of the tropics and that the energy source driving the storm has changed. While tropical cyclones derive their energy from the convection of warm, moist air, extratropical storms derive their energy from the temperature contrast between warm and cold air masses. It is important to note that cyclones can become extratropical and still retain winds of hurricane or tropical storm force. H1 = The storm was classified as a Category 1 hurricane at the time of the advisory. A Category 1 hurricane is a tropical cyclone with maximum one-minute average sustained surface (10 meter) winds of 64
BASIN	Undefined by source
DESCRIPT	Field added by GeoPlan based on NAME
FGDLAQDATE	Date GeoPlan acquired data from source.
AUTOID	Unique ID added by GeoPlan
SHAPE.LEN	Length in meters

USER NOTES:

Over-water portions of storm tracks before 1944 are subject to considerable uncertainties. Aircraft reconnaissance of storms near critical areas was introduced in 1944, and continuous weather satellite surveillance was introduced in the mid-1960s. These two developments mean that more recent storm records have a higher degree of accuracy than those prior to 1944. No tests for logical consistency have been performed on this data set.

This data set includes all known Atlantic Basin (Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and North Atlantic Ocean) tropical cyclones between 1851 and 2008. The term tropical cyclone as used here refers to subtropical depressions and storms, tropical depressions and storms, and all categories of hurricanes from Category 1 to Category 5. This dataset also includes hybrid systems such as tropical lows, waves, subtropical depressions and storms, as well as extratropical storms.

GeoPlan relied on the integrity of the attribute information within the original data.

An ASCII format version of the Historical Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Tracks file is available at <http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastall.shtml>. For more information on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, please see <http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshs.shtml>. For more information on tropical cyclone advisories, please see <http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/forecast/forecast_products.shtml>. General information on subtropical and tropical cyclones is available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, Hurricane Research Division FAQ page at <http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqHED.html>, and from the National Hurricane Center Hurricane Basics page at <http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/basics.shtml>.

These data are intended for geographic display and analysis at the national level, and for large regional areas. The data should be displayed and analyzed at scales appropriate for 1:2,000,000-scale data. No responsibility is assumed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the use of these data.

Over-water portions of storm tracks before 1944 are subject to considerable uncertainties. Aircraft reconnaissance of storms near critical areas was introduced in 1944, and continuous weather satellite surveillance was introduced in the mid-1960s. These two developments allow a high degree of probability that more recent storm center locations were determined with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

This data is provided 'as is' and its vertical positional accuracy has not been verified by GeoPlan

None. Acknowledgement of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Hurricane Center, and/or the NOAA Coastal Services Center would be appreciated in products derived from these data.

The Florida Geographic Data Library is a collection of Geospatial Data compiled by the University of Florida GeoPlan Center with support from the Florida Department of Transportation. GIS data available in FGDL is collected from various state, federal, and other agencies (data sources) who are data stewards, producers, or publishers. The data available in FGDL may not be the most current version of the data offered by the data source. University of Florida GeoPlan Center makes no guarantees about the currentness of the data and suggests that data users check with the data source to see if more recent versions of the data exist. Furthermore, the GIS data available in the FGDL are provided 'as is'. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center makes no warranties, guaranties or representations as to the truth, accuracy or completeness of the data provided by the data sources. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center makes no representations or warranties about the quality or suitability of the materials, either expressly or implied, including but not limited to any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center shall not be liable for any damages suffered as a result of using, modifying, contributing or distributing the materials. A note about data scale: Scale is an important factor in data usage. Certain scale datasets are not suitable for some project, analysis, or modeling purposes. Please be sure you are using the best available data. 1:24000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the county level. 1:24000 data should NOT be used for high accuracy base mapping such as property parcel boundaries. 1:100000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the multi-county or regional level. 1:125000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the regional or state level or larger. Vector datasets with no defined scale or accuracy should be considered suspect. Make sure you are familiar with your data before using it for projects or analysis. Every effort has been made to supply the user with data documentation. For additional information, see the References section and the Data Source Contact section of this documentation. For more information regarding scale and accuracy, see our webpage at: http://geoplan.ufl.edu/education.html

REFERENCES: DATA LINEAGE SUMMARY:

Historical track information was downloaded from the National Hurricane Center's Web site. The textual information was formatted using a PERL script written by the NOAA Coastal Services Center. The file was then brought into ArcGIS as a table and converted to a shapefile with attributes using a custom Visual Basic extension. Process Date: 20090511 GeoPlan downloaded this layer from NOAA from the following download link: ttp://csc-s-maps-q.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/data/atl_hurtrack.zip in June 2009. The layer was projected from GCS Nad83 to Albers HPGN. -All fields upcased -Filename changed from atl_hurtrack.shp to tropc_nov08.shp -Added DESCRIPT field based on NAME -Added FGDLAQDATE based on date data was acquired from source. Process Date: 20090617 Data imported to ArcSDE and exported as a shapefile. Process Date: 20090702

MAP PROJECTION PARAMETERS:

Projection                          ALBERS
Datum                               HPGN
Units                               METERS
Spheroid                            GRS1980
1st Standard Parallel               24  0  0.000
2nd Standard Parallel               31 30  0.000
Central Meridian                   -84 00  0.000
Latitude of Projection's Origin     24  0  0.000
False Easting (meters)              400000.00000
False Northing (meters)             0.00000

DATA SOURCE CONTACT (S):

Name:
Abbr. Name:
Address:


Phone:

Web site:
E-mail:
Contact Person:
         Phone:
        E-mail:

NOAA Coastal Services Center
NOAA
2234 South Hobson Avenue
Charleston, SC
29405-2413
843-740-1200


ttp://csc-s-maps-q.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/data/atl_hurtrack.zip
clearinghouse@csc.noaa.gov

Name:                   FLORIDA GEOGRAPHIC DATA LIBRARY
Abbr. Name:             FGDL
Address:                Florida Geographic Data Library
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                        PO Box 115706
                        Gainesville, FL  32611-5706
Web site:               http://www.fgdl.org

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