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Northern Australia Cyclones Animation

An interactive browser tool that animates tropical cyclone tracks approaching the north Australian coast (Exmouth to Thursday Island) from 1980 to 2026, rendered on a live Mapbox basemap and exportable as a WebM video for use in Keynote or other presentation software.

Files

  • cyclone_render.html — the main tool; one self-contained HTML file, open directly in Chrome (no server needed)
  • storm_tracks_1980.json — pre-processed IBTrACS storm data: 247 storms from 1980–2026 that passed within 100 nautical miles of the north Australian coast, stored as day-offsets from 1980-01-01 with Saffir-Simpson category per observation
  • generate_cyclone_video.py — Python script for high-quality MP4 rendering via cartopy + ESRI satellite tiles + ffmpeg (alternative to the in-browser WebM export; useful for maximum resolution output)

Using the browser tool

  1. Open cyclone_render.html in Chrome (other browsers work but Chrome gives the best WebM recording quality)
  2. Paste a Mapbox public token into the token field and press Enter — the map will load
  3. Choose a basemap style (Standard Satellite works well for presentations)
  4. Adjust animation settings in the sidebar:
    • Season window — default Nov–Apr; storms outside this window are hidden
    • Year range — filter to a specific decade or era
    • Category filter — show only Cat 2+ etc.
    • Track draw rate — slow down how fast each track is drawn in
    • Dwell — how many days a track holds at full brightness before fading
    • Fade duration — how long tracks take to fade out (up to 180 days)
  5. Press ▶ Preview to watch the animation, drag the scrubber to any point
  6. Set output dimensions and press ⏺ Record WebM to capture a video file

Track colour key

Colour Intensity
Green #88cc66 Tropical storm
Yellow #ffe040 Category 1 (64–82 kt)
Orange #ff8820 Category 2 (83–95 kt)
Red #ff2a1a Category 3 Severe (≥96 kt)
Purple #cc40ff Category 4 Intense (≥113 kt)

Track lines change colour along their length as the storm's intensity changes, with a smooth gradient at each transition.

Using the Python MP4 generator

pip install cartopy matplotlib pillow numpy
brew install ffmpeg   # macOS; use apt install ffmpeg on Ubuntu

python generate_cyclone_video.py --help
python generate_cyclone_video.py --fps 30 --days-per-frame 3

The script renders each frame to PNG, then encodes with ffmpeg using settings optimised for Keynote compatibility (-pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart).

Data source

Storm tracks derived from the IBTrACS v04r01 global best-track dataset (NOAA/NCEI). Filtered to storms with at least one observation within 100 nautical miles of the north Australian coastline (Exmouth to Thursday Island, including the Gulf of Carpentaria).