How are the latitude and longitudes determined?
Storm data is entered into the database as a distance in miles and a direction on 16-point compass scale from a known location, usually a town or city. Example: 4.5 miles ESE Atlanta. The NWS uses a database of over 106,000 cities and towns including their latitudes and longitudes. Using an algorithm, the location 4.5 miles ESE of Atlanta can be derived from the known latitude and longitude of Atlanta. These latitude and longitude pairs are generated by the NWS and populated into the database. The latitude and longitude are in DMS (degrees, minutes, seconds) format.
