Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
The National Hurricane Center is debuting a new forecast cone this year to better help the public understand risk. But have you ever thought of how the NHC decides to draw the cone the way they do?
Let's raise your weather IQ!
We’ve all seen it during hurricane season: the cone of uncertainty. This represents the projected path and intensity of a tropical storm or hurricane.
But the cone only represents the most likely track of the storm’s center.
What you don’t see is that it’s made up of invisible circles. The size of each circle contains about 67% of forecast errors made in the last five years.
The cone grows wider as the forecast goes farther into the future to account for changing conditions. #Weather #Hurricane
READ MORE: wcnc.com/article/weather/weather-iq/how-hurricane-forecast-cones-are-drawn-weather-iq/275-1cdfede3-2da4-4dfd-8bee-79b0092afe3e
The National Hurricane Center is debuting a new forecast cone this year to better help the public understand risk. But have you ever thought of how the NHC decides to draw the cone the way they do?
Let's raise your weather IQ!
We’ve all seen it during hurricane season: the cone of uncertainty. This represents the projected path and intensity of a tropical storm or hurricane.
But the cone only represents the most likely track of the storm’s center.
What you don’t see is that it’s made up of invisible circles. The size of each circle contains about 67% of forecast errors made in the last five years.
The cone grows wider as the forecast goes farther into the future to account for changing conditions. #Weather #Hurricane
READ MORE: wcnc.com/article/weather/weather-iq/how-hurricane-forecast-cones-are-drawn-weather-iq/275-1cdfede3-2da4-4dfd-8bee-79b0092afe3e
