Hurricane Preparedness

Technology Used: Adobe Illustrator, ArcMap

About: Living in Louisiana, there is always a chance a hurricane might hit. I thought it would be good to look at the history of hurricane landfall. Along with the statistics of hurricane landfalls, I decided to include a little history about NOAA and some key things to remember before, during, and after a hurricane has made landfall.

Process: I was able to obtain a spreadsheet from NOAA that had hurricane landfall since the 1890s. I brought this spreadsheet into ArcMap to join to a shapefile of the United States. I classified the hurricanes based on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale and the wind speed when they made landfall. I further classified the hurricanes based on major (Category 3 or greater) or minor (Category 1 or 2). I used these categories to create a bivariate map of major and minor hurricane landfalls.