New For the 2024 Hurricane Season: The Cone 2.0

This hurricane season will feature a new version of the National Hurricane Center’s forecast cone.  Forecasters are hoping that this “cone 2.0” will make hurricane threats clearer to all of us.

Once the new graphic debuts in mid-August, we’ll be able to see not just the familiar five-day cone but some additional and important information.

The new cone will also show the wind field of a system, including the extent of both tropical storm force and hurricane force winds.  The wind field is often quite a bit larger than any given point on the five-day forecast cone.  Remember, the traditional cone simply shows where the center of a tropical system is expected to be (with about 67 percent accuracy).

Forecasters are hoping this change in the graphic will dispel the mistaken idea that being “outside the cone” means you won’t experience tropical storm force winds or hurricane force gusts — which has long been a problem in getting the public to take tropical threats seriously.

You’ll also notice the new cone is more colorful — and that’s for a very important reason.  With the current version of the cone, watches and warnings appear as outlines of coastal areas.  But that doesn’t show the threat that strong winds and other hazards pose to inland locations.

Now, when there’s a watch or warning for a county in South Florida (or anywhere else in the U.S.), the entire county will appear in the appropriate color — for example, red for a hurricane warning or blue for a tropical storm warning.

In Florida, lack of hurricane experience among an ever-changing population can lead to the mistake of assuming that being a few miles away from the coast means your risk from a hurricane or tropical storm is much lower.  Hurricane veterans know that’s not true, but newcomers may not — and they may not take the threat seriously enough.

The new cone will join the old familiar version on the NHC’s website as we reach the heart of the Atlantic hurricane season in August.  Because the new cone is more complicated to produce, it’s expected to be available about 30 minutes after the old cone and the text products that NHC forecasters issue on each tropical cyclone.  But forecasters and emergency managers are hoping that you’ll find the new cone is not just worth the wait — but a valuable source of information as well.