Hurricane Information

With hurricane season in the Caribbean fast approaching and considering how bad last year's was, I really needed and wanted to pay attention to what storms were coming our way. After deciding that twitter would most likely give me the most up to date information it then came time to decide who to follow to get said information. Accuracy is the most important and with living on the West Coast we know that being a weather person is the only job you can continuously be wrong at but still keep. All kidding aside, I really did wonder if predicting the weather in the Atlantic / Caribbean is easier than the Pacific.

If you are headed to the Caribbean then you will want to know that the typical hurricane season is June 1 to November 30. Sometimes they can hit earlier or later but it is rare. They also are more likely to hit certain spots over others so if you are travelling during this time and are worried, check out cruises that go to the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao) and stay away from the Bahamas and Cuba which have a higher chance of getting hit. If a hurricane hits while you are on the ship however, the ship will do its best to steer around it and you may miss out on visiting an island or two because of this.

Since we were headed to Florida and then down into the Caribbean, I looked at feeds that would be helpful for that area and determined four that would be helpful:

General: The Weather Channel @weatherchannel

American: National Weather Service Hurricane Centre @nwsnhc

Atlantic: National Hurricane Center Atlantic @nhc_atlantic

American: National Oceanic and atmospheric Administration @noaa

While there are a lot more feeds out there, I went with ones that were well known or at least had a government backing as I figured that they would have higher end equipment for more accurate results. To help with keeping up to date on the trip I also followed the cruise line and couple of local meteorologists.

Update, Sept 20: In the end, this hurricane season was not that bad so I didn't need to be fully prepared but it was nice to have the piece of mind.