Putting Hurricanes on the Map

Introduction

Do you know where hurricanes occur? Do you think the state where you are could ever experience one? Has your zip code ever been affected by a hurricane or a tropical storm?

In this activity, you'll choose a storm from the HURDAT database. You'll build a storm track in Google Earth to show the daily locations and details of your storm. Next, you'll use a visualization tool to examine a wide range of storm tracks, to see where these storms have gone and figure out if you could be at risk.

Keeping Track of What You Learn

Throughout these labs, you will find two kinds of questions.

• Checking In questions are intended to keep you engaged and focused on key concepts and to allow you to periodically check if the material is making sense. These questions are often accompanied by hints or answers to let you know if you are on the right track.
• Stop and Think questions are intended to help your teacher assess your understanding of the key concepts and skills you should be learning from the lab activities and readings.

Your teacher will let you know which answers you should record and turn in.