Okay, so this map was just plain funny to me when I saw it! According to the title (which isn't shown here) it is supposed to show all category 1 to 5 hurricanes whose centers have passed within 10 nautical miles of the state of Florida's boundary during the period of 1851 to 2005, but good luck making any sense out of it. First, while the map does appear to achieve it's goal to show storms within the 10 nautical miles of FL's boundary, although we cannot be sure without something to identify scale and also better use of symbology to show said 10 nautical mile area, the only real label anywhere on the map is for the entire state of FL. So if you were interested in how close any of these storms were in relation to say, the Tampa Bay area, if you were unfamiliar with FL, you would have no idea where to look. Second, while it is somewhat easy to distinguish what each line represents in the legend, it is much more difficult to determine this on the actual map due to the fact that the lines intersect and overlap so much. Also, one thing important to note is the fact that the title fails to mention that this map is not only tracking category 1-5 hurricanes, but it is also tracking other tropical and subtropical weather phenomena such as, depressions, waves, and storms.
One possible better way to represent this data, would be to break it down into 10, or possibly even 25 year intervals. Then break that down further into each tropical storm/hurricane category using a variation of different line colors and symbols. It would also be helpful to add labels for major populated areas in the state of FL, to better determine the location of these storms.
