Last updated October 8, 2026
This site is not an official source of hurricane warnings. For decisions about your safety, follow the National Hurricane Center, your local National Weather Service office and your local emergency officials. If you are told to evacuate, go.
Disclaimer
KOZU 5 Tropics shows information published by the National Hurricane Center (NHC), the National Weather Service (NWS) and other public sources, plus calculations of our own. That includes the closest approach of a storm, when winds may arrive at a place, and the chance of damaging winds there.
- Data can be late, incomplete or wrong. This site checks NHC every few minutes, but products can be delayed, and a problem at any step can leave something out of date or missing. Always check the time on what you're looking at.
- Our calculations are estimates. Wind arrival times come from NHC's official forecast wind field, which is a single forecast. Winds can arrive hours earlier, last longer, or reach farther than shown. The cone shows where a storm's center may go, not how far its impacts reach. Storm surge, flooding rain and tornadoes can happen far from the center.
- Model "spaghetti" tracks are guidance for forecasters, not forecasts. NHC's official forecast weighs them all.
- KOZU 5 Tropics is not affiliated with or endorsed by NOAA, NHC or NWS.
- The site and its alerts are provided as they are, with no guarantee that they're accurate, complete, timely or available. We aren't responsible for decisions made using them.
Privacy
We don't have accounts, we don't run ads, and we don't use analytics or tracking cookies. We don't sell or share data about you. Here's everything the site does with information about you.
Your location (optional)
If you allow it, your browser gives this page your location so it can show how close a storm will come to you and what it may bring. The page rounds it to about 1 km and keeps it in your browser's storage on your device, so it's remembered next time. It is never sent to our server. All the distance and impact calculations happen on your device. "Forget my location" deletes it, and you can turn off location access for this site in your browser or phone settings at any time.
Official NWS alerts (optional)
If you turn on "Check NWS alerts", your browser sends your rounded location directly to the National Weather Service
(api.weather.gov) to ask which alerts are in effect there, and repeats this every few minutes while the page is open. That
request goes to NWS, not to us, and is covered by the NWS privacy policy. "Stop checking"
turns it off.
Advisory push notifications (optional)
If you turn on advisory alerts, your browser's push service (Apple, Google, Mozilla or Microsoft, depending on your device) creates a subscription: a delivery address and encryption keys. We store that subscription on our server along with your alert choices (which basins, and which storm strengths), and use it only to send you advisory alerts. It contains no name, email address or location. Turning alerts off deletes it from our server, and subscriptions that stop working are deleted automatically. Notifications are encrypted and pass through your device's push service on the way to you.
Stored on your device
The page keeps a few things in your browser's storage so your settings stick: your rounded location (if shared), which map imagery is on, your light or dark choice, whether "More details" is open, your alert choices, whether you've turned on NWS alerts, whether you dismissed the "Save to your Home Screen" card or the first-visit setup sheet, and a short summary of the last advisory you saw for each active storm (so the page can tell you what's changed since; it's removed once the storm is no longer active). Only your alert choices reach our server, with an alert sign-up; the rest stays on your device. Clearing this site's data in your browser removes them.
What other services see
| Service | When | What it sees |
|---|---|---|
| Our hosting provider (Railway) | Every visit | Standard request information, such as your IP address and browser type, which may be kept in server logs for security and operations. We don't use it to identify you. |
| Google Fonts | Every visit | Your browser downloads the site's fonts from Google, which sees your IP address and browser type. |
| National Weather Service | Only with NWS alerts on | Your rounded location, sent by your browser. |
| Your push service | Only with advisory alerts on | That you're subscribed, and encrypted notifications sent to you. |
Radar and satellite images are fetched by our server, so their providers don't see your visit.
Share images
Share images are made on your device from the storm data on the page. They show NHC's forecast and never include your location. Nothing is uploaded to us when you make or share one.
Children
This site isn't directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from them.
Changes
If what the site does with data changes, we'll update this page and the date at the top.