About CFHC
About the Central Florida Hurricane Center
Formerly known as Central Florida Hurricane Chasers Tracking Since 1995
Unlike the scenes in the movie Twister, our breed of storm chasers is more of a watchful breed than a "lets get on the road" type. Hurricanes, unlike tornadoes, are a bit more predictable. All you can do is wait, watch and hope it does not decide to turn your way. This is not to be confused with the "Hurricane Hunters," or the aircraft reconnaissance members who actually fly into the storms to take measurements.
What this site is all about is tracking storms, warning folks, and preventing injuries and deaths that would otherwise be catastrophic. These storms are one of nature's most marveling displays of power and anyone in a path of a major hurricane must take proper precautions. Or if you are a die-hard surfer, you've just got to know when the surf is up, within reason.
Hurricane season is from June 1st till November 30th, and the peak time for storms is between late July and late September. This page will be updated as storms form and we are able to track them. We have the coordinates, maps, and information available from the National Hurricane Center, but we also have it in a different format, with news articles highlighting the current situation, and allowing for structured discussions on systems. Suggestions and contributions to this page are very welcome. Use the comment form to the current stories to add comments or observations and everyone will benefit from your viewpoint. Please check the posting rules, we are fairly strict and try to trim the "fat" in order to get more information over fluff. We also don't do hype here.
We hope to learn a lot by doing this and to create a good info source for Eastern Central Florida, and outside the area as well. If you want the latest storm information relating to what storms are out there, look for the links along the left or at the bottom of the main page. As well as the current storm and weather advisories posted along the top of the main page.
It is important to note we are not Meteorologists, and this is not an official source of information. However, we are greatly concerned and interested in these storms. If you are seeking more information regarding tropical cyclones, a good place to check is our own General Hurricane Information page. And, as always, on the Internet there are several other pages to get hurricane information; check out the Hurricane Links page. It is always a good idea to have several sources of information and the links page gives you a way to see other sites. Never rely on this site as a replacement for official information and local media, but rather use it a supplement to those source. We have a few Meteorologists that graciously write "blog" articles you can access from the main page. This is not the same as the news articles, which normally we write.
We have a lot planned for this site in the future, and with your help we can remove what doesn't work and try to add any new suggestions as we get them. We aren't the only Hurricane Site on the web, and thus have a vast set of links, but we're always looking for new ones. Any quality, any origin. The more information out there the better. We focus on certain things, other sites might have something else you might want to look at, so it can't hurt to look around.
Please note this site looks best at a screen resolution of 800x600 or greater. Our design philosophy is less graphics and more speed and useful informational layouts. When graphics are used it is for informational purposes only. It may not look as pretty, but when there is a major system about to make landfall, speed is something most Hurricane sites lack -- we do not want that to happen here.
The main news page is a fully custom program written by Michael Cornelius. It handles display of news, commentary and generates and processes data received from the hurricane center. It creates maps and text data and stores them in a database for analysis and archiving.
A main feature we believe in is communication. And every news item we post allows one to comment, correct, or add to. If you would like to write items for the main news page (and have some credentials) email us and we can set you up with a password that allows for main news items to be added. (all web-form based)
The site uses the PHP web server scripting language. With parts of the weather information written in c++. The cyclone news system is a highly modified variant off of UBBTHREADS from infopop. The backend database uses MySQL. The wiki system uses MediaWiki modified with the Moskstraumen Extension to interface with the main site.
Other hosted sites, weather blogs, and webcams are the responsibility of the site authors themselves.
For more info, check out How to get the Best from our Hurricane Pages.
Central Florida Hurricane Center was created by:
John Cornelius : The head guy for the page. Came up with the original idea back in 1995, and helped get it started. John and Mike are brothers.
Michael A. Cornelius : Located in Orlando, FL
This site uses the Cyclone Content System, which is a combination of custom coded ubbthreads,, mediawiki, and much new material in one system. The design is purely focused on information about hurricanes.
You can see a log of changes made to the site at the CFHC Changelog
History
Central Florida Hurricane Center began as a spin off from a section on the Outdoor Sportsman BBS (which first was created by John and Mike Cornelius in 1992), the first iteration can be traced back to the weather portion of the ODSBBS in 1994 (Which was using RIPscrip and a satellite feed for data).
The "Central Florida Hurricane Chasers" part was created in 1995 and duplicated on the web, originally hosted by NexusPrime and moved to the original outdoor.com as a section on hurricane as "Central Florida Hurricane Chasers", in 1998 outdoor.com was relinquished, and the domain flhurricane.com was registered in 1999 and renamed to Central Florida Hurricane Center.
Special Thanks to:
All our readers and contributors. You make the site!
All our moderators and mets who help out, you keep it running smoothly.
David Hernly, Hampton Virginia, with NDSI and Stonegate net for allowing the colocation of our webserver from 1999-2006.
Todd Pratt, of West Palm Beach, FL, with the Atlanta Braves for creating Ianstorm and allowing our system to run on the network from 2001-2006.
The late Ed Dunham, Melbourne, FL, retired Chief Meteorologist (with Boeing), for helping us with meteorological questions, administering the site and moderating the boards.
Jim Williams, with Hurricane City, for helping us out previously and for the wonderful audio broadcasts and historical information on systems. Joseph Johnston for running the great webcam that we host. More thanks on our Donations and Thanks Page
The National Hurricane Center, for providing updates and making the tough calls when they need to be. All emergency management crews across the Hurricane Prone areas, for being dilligent Thank you all!
If you have any question or comments you can email us at cfhc@flhurricane.com. we have an alternate mail at flhurricane@gmail.com you can use as well (in case the site is down for any reason)
Our banner for your links page if needed: File:Cfhcbanner.jpg
