Better hurricane maps are not making people act, and the cone is still widely misread

A redesigned National Hurricane Center forecast graphic helped people without weather training spot which inland areas were under a hurricane or tropical storm watch, but it did not make them feel more endangered or more willing to act. That is the finding of a Florida State University survey experiment led by Elizabeth Ray, an assistant professor in the university’s School of Communication. Many respondents also still read the width of the cone as the size of the storm.

Save more, waste less: The Cool Down’s newsletter sends smart, simple changes that help you and the planet in your everyday life.

Subscribe to The Cool Down →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.

The result matters because the graphic is built around a simple hope: show the danger more clearly and people will respond to it. The study tested that hope with a randomized comparison, and the answer was split. Understanding improved on one task and stayed flat on the two outcomes that decide whether someone leaves a coastline or boards up a house.

What Florida State tested in Weather, Climate, and Society

The work appears in Weather, Climate, and Society, an American Meteorological Society journal, in volume 18, issue 3 of 2026, published as “Uncertain about the New Cone? How Nonexperts Perceive NHC’s Experimental Track-Forecast Product.” The paper’s DOI is 10.1175/WCAS-D-25-0158.1. Ray is lead author, with Patrick Merle, a professor and director of the School of Communication, and Bradford Johnson, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, as co-authors.

The experimental graphic the team studied was introduced by the hurricane center in 2024. It keeps the familiar cone but adds inland hurricane and tropical storm watches and warnings, so that a reader in the interior of Florida or Georgia can see an alert that the old coastal-only version would not show. The National Hurricane Center supplied the experimental graphics, and the project was paid for with an internal Florida State SEED grant, according to the ScienceDaily summary of the release.

Method: researchers surveyed residents of Florida and Georgia and randomly showed each respondent either the conventional cone or the inland-enhanced version, then compared the two groups. The university’s Aug. 11 news release and the ScienceDaily repost do not state how many people took part, so the sample size is not given here; it appears in the full paper, which could not be opened for this article.

Where the new cone helped, and where it did not

According to the release, nonexperts who saw the new graphic were better at identifying inland areas under a hurricane or tropical storm watch. That is a real gain, since the point of the inland overlay is to reach residents far from the coast, who may not think of themselves as living in a hurricane zone. The graphic did not, however, improve identification of areas under warnings, and it did not significantly change perceived danger or intent to take protective action.

Ray described the starting point plainly, saying the team had a simple question. Her advice at the end was just as short: “Don’t rely on the cone alone.” The researchers recommend pairing the graphic with local forecasts and information about expected impacts, and they stress that the findings are not a criticism of hurricane center forecasting. Merle, quoted in the release, said “The science is excellent,” and the release says the team regards the forecasts as highly accurate. A separate Mirage News account of the study carries the same quotes and the same description of the Florida and Georgia survey.

The authors tie the flat risk perception partly to a persistent confusion: people often mistake a wider cone for a stronger or bigger storm. A graphic can only change behavior if the viewer reads it the way its makers intended, and a viewer who treats a fat cone as a fat storm may conclude that a narrow-looking track means a smaller threat to a house outside the lines. Better watch and warning shading cannot fix that if the cone itself carries the wrong message.

The cone is drawn around the center’s likely path

The hurricane center’s own page, Definition of the NHC Track Forecast Cone, says the cone represents “the probable track of the center of a tropical cyclone.” It is formed by enclosing the area swept out by circles placed along the forecast track, and the page says the circles are sized so that two-thirds of historical official forecast errors over a five-year sample fall within them. The cone is a statement about where the center might go, not about how large the storm is or how far its winds and rain extend.

That gap between what the cone shows and what readers take from it is the reason the Florida State result is hard to fix with a better color scheme. Wind, surge and flooding can arrive well outside the cone, which is exactly the case the inland watch and warning overlay was meant to address. The study suggests that the overlay helps people locate the alerts, while the decision to act still depends on how threatened they feel, and on that point the new picture changed nothing the researchers could measure.

For a reader on the Gulf or Atlantic coast, the practical reading is narrower than a general claim about maps. The graphic is a map of the forecast track and the alerts, and the alerts themselves, along with local officials’ instructions, are the signal to act on. The Florida State team’s work shows, through a randomized comparison, that more legible maps and more protective behavior are two separate problems, and that solving the first does not solve the second.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

Save more, waste less: Subscribe to The Cool Down →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.