The Southwest Gulf and New CFHC feature
12:43 AM EDT - 02 July 1999

It's possible that the wave mentioned in the previous articles may indeed yet develop (still I'd put it between a 20-30% chance), but after it passes over land and winds up back in the Southwest Gulf.

If it did develop what would happen next would be hard to say, however any major development out of this system is quite unlikely. Of course, enough to watch.

There is a new feature on CFHC, it's an automatically created tracking map designed for printing. When a storm forms these images will be generated automatically whenever a new advisory comes in. The main reason that we did this was the fact there aren't any nice real time maps designed for printing. Color maps don't work well and white on black maps waste ink. The new maps use a white chart style map with lines overlaid for the track. Designed to minimize ink/toner usage. Currently only one map style is available, but we hope to start offering more maps and more options for each map. (Such as various model forecast tracks, windfield, probabilities, etc.)

When a new storm becomes active you will be able to see the track map one of three ways. One, clicking on the longitude in the "Active Storms" box at the top right of this page. Two, clicking beside the "Public Advisory" on the pop-up text on this page (IE only), and also by clicking on current storm spotlight.

Also there is the direct url option.

http://flhurricane.com/maps/storm1.html Replace the 1 with the storm number (1-5, after 5 it wraps back to 1) This url is designed to be printed in landscape mode on your printer. To see an example (of Arlene's track) click on the link CFHC Arlene Tracking Map Example Note that this probably won't be the final design, and later on you may change the look anyway.

Other sites may use the images, but in return I ask for a link to this page (like if the image is clicked).

In the future other tracking maps will be fully customizable via web forms so that you can create a dynamically updated map to suit your tastes. With different regions highlighted.
I wrote this because there isn't any tracking maps on the net that I could find designed for printing. Well, any without plots already on them. And for those that like to "connect-the-dots" the future customization features will provide an option to place just the points, so you can "connect the dots" as it were.

- [mac]