The Dominican Republic has its own radars (Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo and Punta Cana) that are generating weather reports used by weather forecaster Jean Suriel and the forecasters at the National Weather Institute (Indomet).
But, for decades, the forecasts made by the US National Hurricane Center have been key and are very much followed for all concerned about what the weather will bring. The NHC tracks the storms as they move through the Caribbean to know their course as they impact Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and eventually continental USA.
Now, the NHC/NOAA is announcing It has revamped its weather forecasting tools for the June-November 2026 season.
The new US National Hurricane Center (NHC) hurricane tracking tools for 2026 Season are touted as technical upgrades. Of these, a more inclusive “track cone” gets most of the attention. “The upgrade seeks to address the communication gaps and empower communities to prepare earlier and more effectively for dangerous hazards from tropical storms and hurricanes,” stated Michael Brennan, director of the NHC, in a recent [PDF] technical brief regarding the 2026 product suite.
The new cone integrates inland tropical storm and hurricane watches and warnings directly into the standard forecast cone graphic. Previously, these graphics focused primarily on coastal alerts, often inadvertently downplaying the risk to communities further from the shore.
Key features of the 2026 graphic include:
• Unified shading: A single-shading style for the entire five-day outlook.
• Integrated legends: New symbols to denote areas where both hurricane watches and tropical storm warnings overlap (visualized by diagonal pink and blue lines).
• Accessibility: Full and intermediate advisories will remain available via hurricanes.gov.
Experimental “Elliptical” Forecasting
Beyond the operational updates, the NHC is launching an experimental version of the track cone that moves away from the traditional “circle-based” model used since 2002.
The new experimental model utilizes ellipses anchored at each forecast point. This geometric shift allows the NHC to better account for specific errors in both speed and direction rather than assuming a uniform margin of error. Most notably, this experimental cone will expand to include 90% of forecast track possibilities, a significant jump from the 67% probability represented by the traditional cone.
While the closest points of the forecast coverage of the NHC are Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands, as the storms move closer and pass through other areas of the Caribbean, included the shores of the Dominican Republic, storm alerts, watches and warnings are issued.
Read more:
NOAA/NHC
26 March 2026