JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The National Hurricane Center’s tropical outlook is being updated! This outlook gives a probability to a region of disturbed weather that could potentially develop into a tropical cyclone. Areas over the Atlantic Hurricane Basin are painted with colors; typically, yellow, orange, red and dark red. This is for illustrating what areas have a low, medium, high or imminent development potential. These forecasts had been in 2 day and 5 day forecasts.
But now, the National Hurricane Center will have these as 2-day and 7-day outlooks. These outlooks are updated 4 times each day. Posting on the 2′s and 8′s, that is to say, 2 am / 2 pm and 8 am / 8 pm each day.
These should not be confused with the storm specific updates where storm specific information including “the cone”, the track, tropical storm watches and warnings, flood warnings, storm surge warnings plus a ton more of information is released. These storm specific outlooks are released on the 5′s and 11′s.
Another change took place on May 15th, the National Hurricane Center will publish these outlooks starting on May 15th each year. They used to start these on June 1st. The NHC has not changed when the season officially starts, that remains June 1st.