JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Let's face it, the hurricane season is only going to get more active as we head into the next few months.
With a short lived cyclone in the Atlantic this week, and our fourth named storm of the year (Dolly), now is a good time to practice using some neat tools available right in the palm of your hand.
The First Coast News app is a free download on your Android or Apple device. Once you have it downloaded, check out the Weather tab in the bottom center of your screen.
There you will find loads of weather features, such as daily and hourly forecasts, our updated weather article, tweets from our meteorologists, and the latest weather news.
You'll also see two icons when you scroll down - Live Radar and Interactive Radar.
Interactive Radar is a great tool because you can view radar in the past and in the future. There's also a layers option. Both of these can also be found at the bottom of the screen.
For tropical forecasting, "Active Tropical Track" and "Active Model Track" will be two of your best friends. The active tropical track is showing the current forecast cone from the National Hurricane Center. The active model track is showing different runs from models we use to create our forecasts - like the HWRF, TVCN, or ECMWF.
Play around with it on your smartphone and let us know if you have any questions. Happy forecasting!
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