Hurricanes since 1851

The screenshot above is a projection (notice the South Pole center) showing hurricanes since 1851. North America is to the top right, just to the left of the firework of hurricane paths. The graphic was produced by John Nelson on UXBlog. The brighter colors are the more intense storms.

Here's what else Nelson says:

A couple of things stood out to me about this data...

1) Structure.
Hurricanes clearly abhor the equator and fling themselves away from the warm waters of their birth as quickly as they can. . . . The void circling the image is the equator.  Hurricanes can never ever cross it.

2) Detection.
Detection has skyrocketed since satellite technology but mostly since we started logging storms in the eastern hemisphere.  Also the proportionality of storm severity looks to be getting more consistent year to year with the benefit of more data.

You can see an animated version on the Guardian data blog, here.