Public Usage of the NHC Website During Recent U.S. Hurricane Landfalls

In 2015, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) began using Google Analytics to obtain bulk statistics of product usage on the NHC website. Later that same year, the NHC website was migrated to its current layout, using analytics to guide some of the development. Preliminary results from the analytic tracking was presented at the 2016 AMS Conference on Tropical Meteorology and Hurricanes, based on statistics from the old NHC webpage for several non-landfalling hurricanes. A more complete analysis is now possible based on the current NHC webpage for 2016 landfalling hurricanes Hermine and Matthew, and 2017 hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. NHC has also introduced several operational and experimental products since the 2015 season, and this new analysis will include those products.

An overview of website traffic and product usage will be presented based on a composite of the storms listed above. Statistics presented include relative usage of each NHC product, how long users spend looking at a each product, and what products users return to most frequently. In addition to products, an overview of the NHC website users will also be presented, including browsers, device types, and frequency of use. Based on the data collected, recommendations for future NHC website development will be proposed.