Considering the availability of tropical storm positional data and the annual interest in tropical storms that springs up with the advent of the first big tropical storm of the season, it is surprising that there aren’t more interactive hurricane mapping sites than there are.

Unisys has track maps for each year for all areas of tropical storm activity dating back to 1995 or so (depending on the area of interest). Wunderground has track maps of all hurricanes in the Atlantic region dating back to 1886. The University of Hawai‘i similarly has gif maps of all sectors, including a world map, back to 1995. The University of Marlyand has individual track maps for each hurricane dating back to 1995 as well as some satellite images. Geology.com also has yearly track maps for the Atlantic region dating back to 1995.

All of the above mentioned sites host static maps. For more interactivity, WRAL.com offers users the option of selecting a storm and watching it spin across the screen. Unfortunately, only 2004 and 2005 and a collection of famous historical storms for the Atlantic region are available to choose from. The Weather Information Network offers the same options on a slightly different map, also with a similar spinning hurricane. Not surprisingly, someone has taken the now familiar Google Map interface and added storm track data for 3 regions (Atlantic, Eastern and Westenr Pacific), The response time is slow but the track maps go back to 1851 (for the Atlantic region). Clicking on a storm circle brings up a familiar Google Maps balloon with pertinent storm information.