Mapping Hurricane Idalia

Hurricane Idalia is expected to make landfall in Florida early Tuesday morning. Overnight the hurricane developed into a powerful Category 3 storm and it is now forecast to become a dangerous Category 4 hurricane. 

NOAA's National Hurricane Center has produced a number of maps showing the forecast track of Hurricane Idalia, the wind speed probabilities, storm surge warnings and rainfall potential. The Warnings map includes a layer which provides information on the most likely arrival times of tropical storm winds along the hurricane's forecast path. 

NBC has created a live streaming YouTube channel Tracking Hurricane Idalia which is switching between a map using the latest satellite images to track the storm's progress and a map showing the storm's forecast path with estimated times of arrival along the mapped path. You can also follow the storm in near real-time using the Windy or Earth :: interactive maps. These animated wind maps update every few hours to show the latest weather forecasts around the world.

Florida's Division of Emergency Management has a web page devoted to Emergency Info for Idalia. This page includes information on open shelters, evacuation orders & evacuation zones, and the latest executive orders.

NASA also posted on Twitter this amazing video of Hurricane Idalia, captured on board the International Space Station.

NOAA's map of the forecast path of Hurricane Idalia includes a forecast cone. If you are unsure about what NOAA's 'cone of uncertainty' actually means then you should read USA Today's How the National Hurricane Center Predicts & Tracks a Powerful Storm's Path. As well as explaining how NOAA's forecast cones show where the center of a storm is most likely to move it also does a great job of explaining how NOAA actually forecast's a storm's path & intensity, and how, from the predicted path, degrees of uncertainty are also calculated.