Hurricane Intelligence Florida
Hurricane Intelligence Florida: Florida impacts and ENSO, 1851 to present. A JnGmedia property.

Fingerprint matching | 128 storms | 1851-2025

Analog Finder

Two ways in: compare a real storm's track against history, or describe a hypothetical scenario. Analogs are context, never forecasts.

Compare a Real Storm's Track

Pick a storm to see which others ran a similar path, scored two genuinely different ways: how close the tracks actually ran to each other near Florida, and how each storm handled the Florida Straits / Cuba shelf on approach, a narrow shallow shelf that tends to interrupt intensification and produce more erratic short-term heading changes than the deep open Gulf or Atlantic. Both scores show separately on every card, so the ranking is never a black box. Defaults to storms since 1950, where positions come from direct aircraft/satellite tracking rather than reconstructed reports.

clear

Comparing to AL081906 (1906) — peak 3 · FL impact 3.

Pre-ONI 3FL impact Cross-Peninsula Track Major Hurricane (Cat 3+) Rapid Intensification
Formed
1906-10-08
Dissipated
1906-10-23
Peak wind
105 kt
Lifetime category
3
Min pressure
953 mb (lifetime)
Florida date
1906-10-18
Approach
atlantic
FL regions
SW3 SE3
Center landfall
yes (3)
ENSO (ASO ONI)
pre-1950, no ONI
Peak surge (FL)
none exists for this era

Surge: no curated record, and none is likely to exist. Reliable landfall-zone surge observation generally predates neither the modern gauge network nor NHC Tropical Cyclone Reports for storms of this era; surge comparisons on this site skew modern as a result (disclosed on the methodology page).

Since 1950 Before 1950 All years (1851-2025)
Top 6 Top 20 All matches

Storms before 1950 predate aircraft and satellite tracking; their positions are reconstructed from ship and coastal reports, so a track-shape match here carries more positional uncertainty than a modern-era one, even when the visual overlap looks striking.

Ranked by near-Florida path first (how close the two tracks actually ran to each other once near the state), then by Straits/Cuba approach (did each handle the shallow shelf the same way on the way in), then by trait match. These answer genuinely different questions -- a storm can wobble identically on approach and still land 300 miles apart, or vice versa -- so they are shown separately, never blended into one number.

Showing 6 matches.

Track colors below are always: teal = AL081906, orange = the comparison storm named in each card. On desktop these show as compact thumbnails, three per row; being vector maps they stay crisp at any size. Click a storm's name to open its own full-size record and track.

View AL081906 and these matches in the Zone Lab tool

AL051910 (1910) peak 4 · FL impact 2 pre-1950 · reconstructed track near-Florida path 1.7 of 2 · Straits approach 0 of 2 · trait match 4 of 8 same month, category within 1, rapid intensifier, ran very close to the same path across Florida
AL041894 (1894) peak 3 · FL impact 2 pre-1950 · reconstructed track near-Florida path 1.7 of 2 · Straits approach 0.4 of 2 · trait match 6 of 8 adjacent month, same peak category, atlantic approach, rapid intensifier, somewhat similar Straits wobble, ran very close to the same path across Florida
Donna (1960) peak 4 · FL impact 4 near-Florida path 1.7 of 2 · Straits approach 0 of 2 · trait match 5 of 8 adjacent month, category within 1, atlantic approach, rapid intensifier, ran very close to the same path across Florida
AL091945 (1945) peak 4 · FL impact 4 pre-1950 · reconstructed track near-Florida path 1.6 of 2 · Straits approach 0.5 of 2 · trait match 4 of 8 adjacent month, category within 1, atlantic approach, somewhat similar Straits wobble, ran very close to the same path across Florida
Charley (2004) peak 4 · FL impact 4 near-Florida path 1.6 of 2 · Straits approach 0 of 2 · trait match 2 of 8 category within 1, rapid intensifier, ran very close to the same path across Florida
AL051878 (1878) peak 2 · FL impact 2 pre-1950 · reconstructed track near-Florida path 1.6 of 2 · Straits approach 0.3 of 2 · trait match 5 of 8 adjacent month, category within 1, atlantic approach, rapid intensifier, somewhat similar Straits wobble, ran very close to the same path across Florida

View AL081906 and these matches in the Zone Lab tool

Describe a Hypothetical Scenario

Scoring weighs month (2), peak category (2), approach side (2), and ENSO phase (1), plus an optional point for rapid intensifiers; each match explains exactly which traits it shares.

Pick at least one trait above to search. Example scenario: October, Category 4, Gulf approach, Neutral phase; three of the last five Gulf-side October majors will look uncomfortably familiar.

Wondering about a storm active right now? The home page shows the latest NHC observations with their historical analogs.

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