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 Gladys (1968) — peak 2 · FL impact 2.

Neutral 2FL impact Cross-Peninsula Track
Formed
1968-10-13
Dissipated
1968-10-21
Peak wind
85 kt
Lifetime category
2
Min pressure
977 mb (lifetime)
Florida date
1968-10-19
Approach
gulf
FL regions
NW2 NE1
Center landfall
yes (1)
ENSO (ASO ONI)
+0.45
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 = Gladys, 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 Gladys and these matches in the Zone Lab tool

AL041886 (1886) peak 1 · FL impact 1 pre-1950 · reconstructed track near-Florida path 1.7 of 2 · Straits approach 0 of 2 · trait match 3 of 8 category within 1, gulf approach, ran very close to the same path across Florida
Easy (1950) peak 3 · FL impact 3 near-Florida path 1.7 of 2 · Straits approach 0.7 of 2 · trait match 5 of 8 adjacent month, category within 1, gulf approach, same ENSO phase, similar Straits approach angle, ran very close to the same path across Florida
Tampa Bay (1921) peak 4 · FL impact 3 pre-1950 · reconstructed track near-Florida path 1.6 of 2 · Straits approach 1 of 2 · trait match 4 of 8 same month, gulf approach, somewhat similar Straits wobble, similar Straits approach angle, ran very close to the same path across Florida
AL061882 (1882) peak 4 · FL impact 1 pre-1950 · reconstructed track near-Florida path 1.6 of 2 · Straits approach 0.8 of 2 · trait match 4 of 8 same month, gulf approach, similar Straits approach angle, ran very close to the same path across Florida
Debby (2024) peak 1 · FL impact 1 near-Florida path 1.6 of 2 · Straits approach 0.5 of 2 · trait match 4 of 8 category within 1, gulf approach, same ENSO phase, somewhat similar Straits wobble, ran very close to the same path across Florida
AL041896 (1896) peak 3 · FL impact 3 pre-1950 · reconstructed track near-Florida path 1.5 of 2 · Straits approach 0.9 of 2 · trait match 4 of 8 adjacent month, category within 1, gulf approach, similar Florida Straits wobble, ran very close to the same path across Florida

View Gladys 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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