🌀 ACE Tracker

Atlantic & Eastern Pacific Hurricane ACE Tracker

A Python-based tool that tracks Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) for Atlantic and Eastern Pacific hurricane seasons with comprehensive storm-by-storm historical data from 1991 onward.

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📊 Features

• Automated Data Collection: Fetches real-time storm data from climatlas.com and historical data from NOAA HURDAT2
• Dual Basin Tracking: Tracks both Atlantic and Eastern Pacific hurricane seasons
• Excel Spreadsheets: Generates detailed Excel files with 5 tabs each:
  • Summary (season overview, stats, and similar years)
  • Current Season Storms (individual storm breakdown)
  • Historical Storms (all storms since 1991)
  • Yearly Totals (ranked historical seasons)
  • Discord Update (copy/paste ready for Discord)
• Mobile-Friendly Dashboard: Interactive HTML dashboard with stats, rankings, and insights
• Discord Integration: Formatted updates ready to copy and paste into Discord
• Historical Analysis:
  • Season rankings back to 1991
  • Similar season comparisons
  • NOAA classification (Below Normal, Near Normal, Above Normal, Extremely Active)
  • Storm intensity breakdowns (Tropical Depressions, Tropical Storms, Hurricanes, Major Hurricanes)

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📸 Screenshots

Dashboard

The mobile-friendly HTML dashboard provides an at-a-glance view of the current hurricane season:

Interactive dashboard with season stats, storm breakdown, and historical rankings

Excel Spreadsheet

Comprehensive Excel workbooks with 5 tabs of detailed data:

Summary tab showing season overview and key statistics

Current season storms with ACE breakdown and categories

Note: To add screenshots to this README:

1. Run the tracker: python3 ace_tracker.py
2. Open data/ACE_Dashboard.html in your browser and take a screenshot
3. Open one of the Excel files and take screenshots of the tabs
4. Save images to the images/ folder with the filenames shown above
5. Commit and push the images to GitHub

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🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Python 3.7 or higher
• Internet connection (for fetching live data)

Installation

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/jeremypfi/ace-tracker.git
   cd ace-tracker

2. Install dependencies

   pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Usage

Run the tracker:

python3 ace_tracker.py

The script will:

1. Download the latest storm data from climatlas.com
2. Download historical data from NOAA HURDAT2
3. Generate two Excel spreadsheets in the data/ folder:
   • ACE_Tracker_Atlantic.xlsx
   • ACE_Tracker_Pacific.xlsx
4. Create an HTML dashboard: ACE_Dashboard.html
5. Print a console report with the latest stats

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📁 Project Structure

ace-tracker/
├── README.md              # This file
├── ace_tracker.py         # Main Python script
├── requirements.txt       # Python dependencies
├── .gitignore            # Git ignore rules
└── data/                 # Generated files (not committed)
    ├── ACE_Tracker_Atlantic.xlsx
    ├── ACE_Tracker_Pacific.xlsx
    └── ACE_Dashboard.html

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📖 What is ACE?

Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) is a metric used by NOAA to measure the total energy of a tropical cyclone season. It's calculated by squaring the maximum sustained wind speed (in knots) every 6 hours when the system is at tropical storm strength or higher, then summing those values.

Formula: ACE = Σ(V²max) × 10⁻⁴

ACE provides a better measure of season activity than just counting named storms, since it accounts for both intensity and duration.

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🎯 Understanding the Data

Spreadsheet Tabs

1. Summary - Quick overview with:

   • Total ACE for the season
   • Percentage of "normal" season
   • Historical ranking (since 1991)
   • Similar past seasons
   • Key season statistics

2. Current Season Storms - Individual storm details:

   • Storm name, ACE value, percentage contribution
   • Category, max wind speed, duration
   • Major hurricanes highlighted in red

3. Historical Storms - Complete storm database:

   • All storms since 1991 with ACE calculations
   • Category, max wind, duration
   • Current year storms highlighted in yellow

4. Yearly Totals - Historical season rankings:

   • All seasons ranked by ACE
   • NOAA classification for each year
   • Storm counts (named storms, hurricanes, major hurricanes)

5. Discord Update - Formatted text ready to copy/paste into Discord

NOAA Season Classifications

• Below Normal: < 73 ACE
• Near Normal: 73-126 ACE (Atlantic) / 73-159 ACE (Pacific)
• Above Normal: 126-159 ACE (Atlantic) / 159+ ACE (Pacific)
• Extremely Active: 159+ ACE (Atlantic)

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🔧 Configuration

Edit the CONFIGURATION section in ace_tracker.py to customize:

• Output folder: Change where files are saved
• Start year: Adjust the historical range
• Normal ACE values: Update baseline comparisons
• Backup data: Fallback values if network fails

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🐛 Troubleshooting

"No module named openpyxl"

pip3 install openpyxl

"Permission denied" error

chmod +x ace_tracker.py

Script can't download data

• Check your internet connection
• The script will automatically fall back to backup data if downloads fail
• You'll see a message: ✗ Error fetching current season: ... → Using backup data instead

Spreadsheet won't open

• Ensure you have Excel, LibreOffice, or OpenOffice installed
• The .xlsx format is compatible with all modern spreadsheet applications

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📊 Data Sources

• NOAA HURDAT2 - Historical best-track data (1851-present) for storm tracks, wind speeds, and ACE calculations
• Climatlas.com (Dr. Ryan Maue) - Current season real-time storm data and ACE values from ATCF advisories
• NOAA CPC - Season classification thresholds and 1991-2020 climatological normals

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to:

• Report bugs
• Suggest new features
• Submit pull requests

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📝 License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.

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🙏 Credits

• Built with Claude (Anthropic)
• Data from NOAA National Hurricane Center and Climatlas.com
• Inspired by hurricane tracking communities on Discord

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🌊 2026 Hurricane Season

Good luck tracking the storms! 🌀

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Questions or issues? Open an issue on GitHub or reach out to @jeremypfi