Today Marks the first day of the 2008 Altantic Hurricane Season. It starts off this morning with Arthur still classified as a Tropical Storm, dumping heavy rain over Central America.

Names for storms this year are: Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gustav, Hanna, Ike, Josephine, Kyle, Lili, Marco, Nana, Omar, Paloma, Rene, Sally, Teddy, Vicky, Wilfred

Atlantic Hurricanes can affect anywhere along the eastern coastline and Gulf of Mexico, and even cause a great deal of inland flooding and some times wind damage well inland of where a system makes landfall.

Here's a plot of all storms from 1851-2004, see if your area is in it:

Currently one of flhurricane's image servers is down and we are working to get that back up, so the site may be appear jerky at times until we get all the image servers back online. Hopefully very soon.

If you would like to help out site costs this year for replacement hardware to keep the site running smooth please check out our Donations page. Thanks for all who have helped. We'll be tracking the storms and offering up more discussion with hopefully less unneeded hype.

For Florida, there is no Hurricane "Sales Tax Holiday" this year. This should not stop you from making sure all your supplies are there, and in working order.

As always, be hurricane prepared! And always, always, take the word of the National Hurricane Center over anything you read on the Internet, here or otherwise.

May 31st Update
Tomorrow is the first day of the Atlantic Hurricane Season, which lasts until November 30th, but a day before it starts we already have our first named storm of the year...

Invest 90L was upgraded to minimal Tropical Storm Arthur just as he made landfall along the northern coast of Belize at 31/17Z. Although first forecasts move the system westward as a Tropical Depression into the Bay of Campeche in a couple of days, the system, under increased ridging to the north, is now in western Belize moving to the southwest - perhaps even south southwest. With the current movement, the chances of Tropical Depression Arthur reaching the southern Gulf of Mexico become increasingly remote and the system will probably die out over western Belize or the mountains of northern Guatemala.

Heavy rainfall and flash flooding are likely over the southern Yucatan, Belize and Guatemala. The highest sustained winds reported from Phillip Goldston Intl. Airport near Belize City were 12mph although reports of tropical storm force winds were reported along the northern coast of Belize at landfall.

Thus starts the 2008 Atlantic Basin Hurricane Season - a day early - with the somewhat uncommon event of a tropical cyclone in May. Please use common sense and courtesy in your posts this season - see my Met Blog for guidance. Looks like its going to be a long and interesting season of storm tracking.
ED