About CycloneTracks
CycloneTracks is a free, independent archive mapping the full path of every recorded tropical cyclone in Australian waters — from the moment each system was first tracked through to landfall or dissipation.
Why we built this
Australia has been living with tropical cyclones for well over a century, but the official records — while thorough — were never really built for browsing. We wanted a place where anyone, not just meteorologists, could explore that history: see how a cyclone's path unfolded day by day, compare storms against each other, and get a genuine feel for how often, and how closely, these systems have affected the Australian coastline.
What started as a simple question — "has a cyclone ever tracked close to where I live?" — turned into a project to map 1,133 recorded cyclones, spanning 1907 to 2026, in one searchable, visual archive.
Where the data comes from
Every track on this site is sourced from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's Tropical Cyclone Best Track Database — the official record of tropical cyclone positions, intensity, and central pressure across the Australian region, maintained by BOM meteorologists and periodically reanalysed for accuracy. Older records (from the early 1900s) are naturally sparser than modern ones, simply because less instrumentation and fewer observations were available at the time — we've preserved that distinction rather than smoothing over it.
Where available, we've also added short written histories for individual cyclones, drawing on BOM's official post-cyclone reports and, where useful, additional public sources such as Wikipedia. These are written in our own words as summaries, not reproductions of the original reports — always with a link back to the source if you want the full detail.
What you can do on CycloneTracks
- Browse the full archive — search and filter every recorded cyclone by name, season, or intensity at Browse Cyclones.
- See the actual track — every cyclone's page includes a mapped path with a replay animation, showing exactly how the system moved over time.
- Read the history — for cyclones with a written summary, get the full story: when it formed, how strong it got, where it crossed the coast, and what it left behind.
A work in progress
This is an independent, ongoing project — the track data is complete, but written histories are still being added cyclone by cyclone, working back through the archive. If you spot something that looks wrong, or you have information about a specific cyclone we haven't covered yet, we'd love to hear about it.