During the active life of a storm, we're going to provide you with the opportunity to make forecasts on the future position and intensity of the storm.

To make a forecast, use the form entitled "Forecast Hurricane Dean" (for example). It will look like this:

Alongside each field you will see numbers. These are the National Hurricane Center's forecasted positions and intensities for the given points in time.

You can use the 'Auto-fill with NHC forecast' button to load the form with the position and intensity forecasts from the National Hurricane Center for the times in question. We have generated this data by interpolating the NHC's latest forecast—in layman's terms, by filling in the blanks between the forecast points they provided in their latest advisory. This 'load the form' button is useful if you want to deviate only slightly from the NHC (in the future, we'd like to make it possible to pre-load other popular forecasting models).

You can forecast for as many or as few of the times, positions, and wind speeds as you like. Nothing you leave blank will count against you. Your forecasting performance will only be based upon the fields you complete.

Once you've finished entering your forecast, click the 'Forecast Hurricane Dean' button. You should then see a green box stating: "Forecast saved." You have until the deadline written at the top of the forecast form to change your mind or withdraw any of your provided values. Once the deadline arrives, you will not be able to retract or modify your forecast.

If you enter something in error, don't worry. Just change the value and re-submit the form. Your previous values will be deleted and the new values will be used instead.

Once the deadline arrives, forecasting is temporarily closed, until the hurricane center releases an update on the storm's position and intensity.

As updates roll in, our system will look up your forecast from 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, 96, or 120 hours ago, and compare where you said the storm would be (and how strong you said it would be) with the values the National Hurricane Center has officially observed. As we do so, your profile will be updated to reflect your performance, for better or for worse.

For the time being, your profile page and the top forecasters page will be the best places to see the results of our updates to your forecasting performance.

In each case, you will see your performance stated in terms of margin of error, or how many miles or miles per hour you are off, on average, from the actual observed measurements. Naturally, you will probably notice increasing numbers as time increases. The classic rule of thumb is 100, 200, 300 miles for 24, 48, and 72 hours, respectively. We aren't aware of any rules on intensity, so however you perform, feel free give yourself a pat on the back for being brave enough to try.

Blue numbers mean you are doing worse than the NHC, yellow numbers mean you are doing better. For wind speeds, we will show you a negative number if you underestimate, and a positive number if you overestimate. In both cases, storm position and wind speed, 0.0 is the best possible 'score', indicating perfection.

As this is a brand new service, we are very open to feedback, suggestions, and criticisms, especially of the interaction you have with the pages: are they clunky and unresponsive, cluttered and confusing, or just downright strange? Let us know by writing us an email at .

Happy forecasting!

The Stormpulse.com Forecasting Team