Small-scale irregularities in the tracks of hurricanes

Abstract

In the past, trajectories of tropical cyclones have usually been drawn as rather smooth curves often extending over vast oceanic stretches. As more observations have become available, mainly from aircraft reconnaissance and radar, it has become apparent that these storms seldom move along smooth paths for great distances. However, the published tracks are still rather smooth and do not show many of the irregular features indicated by the individual position reports. Errors exist in the reports and there is little doubt that some smoothing is necessary but there is the possibility that significant features are being smoothed out of the storm tracks.