We've reached the climatological peak of hurricane season in the Atlantic. This peak coincides with the time of highest average ocean water temperatures. History says that on any given day during the second week of September, there's about a 50% chance of having a hurricane somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, or Caribbean Sea. That's as high as the probability gets at any time of year.

The National Hurricane Center maintains archives of data about tropical storms and hurricanes on their web site at

www.nhc.noaa.gov

all the way back to 1851. There are two other web sites that I'd highly recommend, each adding its own flair to the historical hurricane data.

First, take a look at

weather.unisys.com/hurricane

where you can get colorful maps and tracking information for every recorded tropical storm and hurricane over the last 150 years. I also frequently visit

weather.terrapin.com/hurricane

where you can animate a storm's movements and select a storm by name or by location - so for example, you could get a list of all tropical systems that have passed within 100 miles of Wilmington, Dover, or Philadelphia in the last century.