Hurricane Tracker Display: Category, Track and Distance

November 4, 2026

A hurricane tracker display keeps every active tropical storm on a screen you already look at, so you don't have to open a weather site to check on one. On GridTicker, the Hurricanes & typhoons feed shows a card for each storm the US warning centers are advising on. Each card gives the storm's category, winds and pressure, which way it is moving and how far it is from your nearest place. It also says what the forecast expects next, with the latest satellite infrared picture beside the storm's track. It runs in a browser, so a second monitor, a spare laptop or a TV in the corner can do the job.

It is early November. The Atlantic season runs to the end of the month, and the western Pacific's typhoons don't keep to a season at all. This article covers what a storm card shows, how to read it and how to set the feed up for where you live.

What a storm card shows

The storms come from two sources. The National Hurricane Center covers the Atlantic and the eastern Pacific, and the Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center covers the rest of the world. Each storm gets a card of its own, and each card carries:

• The category, with the storm's winds and pressure
• Its direction: which way the storm is moving
• Its distance: how far it is from the nearest of your places
• What comes next: that the forecast brings it within so many miles of one of your places, when it reaches land, or how strong it gets
• A map of its track, and ahead of the track, the storm itself as seen from space

The distance line answers the question most people actually have about a storm, which is how close it is to them, without any measuring on a map.

Reading the satellite picture

The picture ahead of the track is the latest infrared satellite image. Infrared shows how cold the cloud tops are, and the card colors the coldest ones. Those are the tallest thunderstorms, the part that drives the storm.

In a browser, the picture loops through the storm's last couple of hours. Over that time you can see whether the cold core is tightening around a center or spreading out ragged. A compact, solid area of cold cloud usually means a storm that is organized. A lopsided or thinning one often means a storm that is struggling.

What the category means

The category on a card refers to the Saffir-Simpson scale, which ranks a hurricane by its sustained winds.

Categories 3 and up count as major hurricanes. The scale only measures wind. Storm surge and rain can do more damage than wind, so read the category together with the distance and the forecast line, and with any warning for your area.

Choosing which oceans to watch

The Storms from setting picks the oceans:

1. The Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of America
2. The eastern and central Pacific
3. The western Pacific's typhoons
4. The north Indian Ocean
5. The southern hemisphere

The first two are ticked unless you change them. Tick all five and the feed covers the whole world, which is useful if you have family abroad, travel often or simply like watching typhoons.

A storm near you shows anyway

You don't have to guess which basin a threat will come from. Any storm forecast to come within about 300 miles of one of your places shows up whatever oceans you ticked.

Distance from home, measured from your own places

Distances are measured from your weather places, set on the News & Weather page. You can have up to four. Type a ZIP code or an airport code, or use your browser's location. For an exact spot, press Pick on a map, drop a pin on the house, a cabin or a relative's street, and give it a name of your own.

A few things to know:

• The units follow your temperature setting: °F means miles and °C means kilometers.
• Weather places work inside the United States only, because forecasts and alerts come from the US National Weather Service. You can still track storms anywhere in the world.
• A coastal family can add home, a beach house and a parent's town, and each card says how far the storm is from the nearest of them.

When a storm becomes a warning

A storm card tells you what a storm is doing. A warning tells you what to do about it. In GridTicker these are separate feeds. "Weather alerts" is its own source, so you can have the warnings without the forecast. Each place also has its own Alerts tick, so you can keep a place's forecast without being warned about it.

A hurricane warning counts as a dangerous warning, so it takes over the whole screen for as long as it lasts. If you would rather see it as a card in the News row, untick that option. The alert list is checked every 30 seconds.

Putting it on a screen

GridTicker runs in any modern browser on Windows, macOS, Linux or a Raspberry Pi, with nothing to install. It runs full screen or in a window and fits the space it is given: a bar across the top of a monitor, or a whole screen of its own.

• Choose the screen. A grid of tickers against screens decides where each one shows. You can put weather on the TV and leave it off your work monitor.
• Choose the hours. Each ticker can have hours on each screen, so storm cards can show in the morning and evening and stay off overnight.
• Give it a row. With Stack tickers in rows on, each ticker scrolls in a row of its own, so storms don't wait behind headlines.

How GridTicker helps with this

For a hurricane tracker display, there are three steps:

1. Switch on Hurricanes & typhoons under Weather in the table at the top of the News & Weather page.
2. Add your places under Weather locations.
3. Tick the oceans you care about under Storms from.

The guide's section on hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires walks through every part of a storm card. The sections on weather locations and weather alerts cover places and warnings.

To keep this season's storms in view, set up a strip.