50 Years of Typhoons

68 Years of Wind and Rain is an animated map showing historical typhoon tracks in and around the southeast coast of China. The map visualizes 1,832 typhoons in the region since 1949.

As the map animation plays out typhoon tracks are added to the map by year. The yellow typhoon tracks show the typhoons that made landfall in mainland China. As the animation plays the bar graph below the map also updates to show the frequency of typhoons by year.

Below the main map are a number of small multiple maps showing the tracks of some of the most destructive tropical storms to have hit China. These small maps show the strength of each typhoon and where each made landfall. Towards the bottom of the page are graphs showing which Chinese provinces have suffered the most from tropical storms.


NOAA's Historical Hurricane Tracks map allows you to view global hurricane data dating back as far as 1842. Using the map you can search and visualize hurricane data by storm name, location and by date. If you enter the name of a hurricane (for example 2012's Hurricane Sandy) you can view the hurricane's track on the map. Points along each hurricane's track allow you to view details about the wind speed and pressure for each day. A link is also provided to read a PDF of NOAA's storm report for each hurricane.

If you select the 'Hurricanes' option from the map menu then you can view all the historical hurricane tracks on one map. If you select the 'County Strikes' option you can view a choropleth map of U.S. coastal counties. The counties colored dark red have historically had more hurricane strikes than the counties colored with a lighter red.


This map of historical Hurricane and Tropical Cyclone Track Density uses Carto's Torque library to animate the track density of hurricanes and tropical cyclones from 2000-2013. The map uses data from the National Climatic Data Center - NOAA.

The Hurricane and Tropical Cyclone Track Density map doesn't allow you to explore individual hurricane tracks but the heatmap does reveal the areas of the world which are most prone to hurricanes and tropical cyclones. As the animation plays the seasonal nature of hurricanes and tropical cyclones around the world is also revealed by the rise and fall of storm activity on the map.