The National Hurricane Centers’ Improvements for 2026
Bottom Line: Hurricane seasons come and go; however; NOAA offseasons are spent upgrading their systems and products. As technology improves, NOAA tools do too. NOAA’s annual list of improvement for the 2026 hurricane season are out and they include five meaningful changes:
- Cone Graphic with a depiction of inland tropical storm and hurricane watches and warnings for the United States becomes operational:
NHC will implement a new version of the cone graphic that includes a depiction of all land-based (coastal and inland) tropical storm and hurricane watches and warnings in effect for the continental United States, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
- Storm Surge Watches and Warnings, Peak Storm Surge Graphic, and Potential Storm Surge Flooding Map for Hawaii
NWS will have the ability to issue Storm Surge Watches and Warnings for the main Hawaiian Islands, identical to those issued for the U.S. East and Gulf coasts, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
- Mobile-friendly front page of the NHC website
NHC is beginning to work on a version of its website, hurricanes.gov, that is more mobile friendly and more accessible. As a first step, a refreshed version of the front page of the NHC website will be hosted on NHC’s mobile URL (https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/mobile/) around the beginning of the 2026 hurricane season. This version will work on mobile, tablet, and desktop devices.
- Updated symbology of disturbances in the Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook for which development is not expected
In previous years, the Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook has depicted all systems with a low chance (less than 30%) of development as a yellow X, including systems that had a near 0% chance in both the 2-day and 7-day forecast periods. Beginning in 2026, systems in which development is not expected (near 0% in both 2- and 7-day forecast periods) will be depicted as a gray X.
5) Annual update to the track forecast error cone
The size of the tropical cyclone track forecast error cone for the Atlantic basin in 2026 will be about 4–8% smaller as compared to 2025. For the eastern North Pacific basin, it will also be about 3–8% smaller than the 2025 cone.