Tropical Cyclone Track Forecasting - History

History

The methods through which tropical cyclones are forecast have changed with the passage of time. The first known forecasts in the Western Hemisphere were made by Lt. Col. William Reed of the Corps of Royal Engineers at Barbados in 1847. Reed mostly utilized barometric pressure measurements as the basis of his forecasts. Benito Vines introduced a forecast and warning system based on cloud cover changes in Havana during the 1870s. Forecasting hurricane motion was based on tide movements, as well as cloud and barometer changes over time. The 1895, it was noted that cool conditions with unusually high pressure preceded tropical cyclones in the West Indies by several days. Before the early 1900s, most forecasts were done by direct observations at weather stations, which were then relayed to forecast centers via telegraph. It was not until the advent of radio in the early twentieth century that observations from ships at sea were available to forecasters. Despite the issuance of hurricane watches and warnings for systems threatening the coast, forecasting the path of tropical cyclones did not occur until 1920. By 1922, it was known that the winds at 3 kilometres (9,800 ft) to 4 kilometres (13,000 ft) in height above the sea surface within the storms' right front quadrant were representative of a storm's steering, and that hurricanes tended to follow the outermost closed isobar of the subtropical ridge.

In 1937, radiosondes were used to aide tropical cyclone forecasting. The next decade saw the advent of aircraft-based reconnaissance by the military, starting with the first dedicated flight into a hurricane in 1943, and the establishment of the Hurricane Hunters in 1944. In the 1950s, coastal weather radars began to be used in the United States, and research reconnaissance flights by the precursor of the Hurricane Research Division began in 1954. The launch of the first weather satellite, TIROS-I, in 1960, introduced new techniques to tropical cyclone forecasting that remain important to the present day. In the 1970s, buoys were introduced to improve the resolution of surface measurements, which until that point, were not available at all over sea surfaces.