Online Program

A Taxonomic Approach at Characterizing and Predicting Texas Coast Hurricanes (304204)

Keywords: meteorology, climate, hurricane, storm systems, dynamic time warping

We found that it may be possible to come up with a model to describe a hurricanes’ likely end point based on its staring point and path thereafter. For the purposes of this project we’re only concerned with hurricanes that pass through the Texas coast. Our model was build using dynamic time warping to plot the hurricanes location at any given time. We then used hierarchical clustering to group the hurricanes by similarity of paths. After we clustered the hurricanes, we then observed the characteristics of the hurricanes in each cluster. Our initial purpose for taking on this project is to aid the ongoing research in food bank preparedness during an impending natural disaster but the results of our study go far beyond that. If a storm system begins to develop at any particular coordinates, we provide information about what our model suggests will be the likelihood of various endpoints as well as the intensities of those hurricanes. People will be able to use our model for any kind of general preparedness during a potential impending hurricane. This will be particularly helpful to food banks that are susceptible to the destructive wrath of a hurricane.