The ever-expanding Internet opens a universe of sites for mouse-pad meteorologists.

A click can show computer models used by hurricane specialists at the National Hurricane Center for forecasts, along with satellite views of tropical waves, water vapor images and masses of Saharan dust moving across the ocean.

Some sites offer only raw data and information from government sources. Others package it with a bit of explanation. Some commercial sites provide the opinions of their own weather experts.

The vast amount of information carries a risk, however. Using the Web sites to make your own hurricane forecasts is like do-it-yourself brain surgery.

You don't want to make a decision about preparing for a hurricane or evacuation unless it's based on hurricane center forecasts and orders from local emergency management offices.

Looking at the image of the "spaghetti" models is not enough for you to predict where a storm will go because models perform with different levels of accuracy on each storm.

Many sites carry a disclaimer not to use the information to make life-or-death decisions.

Here is a sample of Web sites devoted to hurricanes:

www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/tropicalwx/forecasttrack.php?

When the hurricane center is tracking a storm, this site offers a collection of forecast models from the National Weather Service.

Cool stuff: It has nearly every model available. You can filter which models you want to see. An archive of past model runs on a storm to compare changes every six hours.

euler.atmos.colostate.edu/˜vigh/guidance

This site features model tracks from Colorado State University. It gives three choices of early, late and ensemble model runs, but each is shown on a separate view so you have to bounce among them.
Cool stuff: This has an archive of model runs in past years, but it is not easy to navigate.

ralphstropicalweather.homestead.com/RalphTropicalWeatherOut.html

There's a bit of everything here. This site has model forecasts, links galore to weather sites, and a map showing lows, highs and tropical waves across the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

Cool stuff: The map is animated with an overview of conditions in hurricane formation regions and is easy to comprehend. And how can you not like a site called Ralph's Tropical Weather?

cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic

Want to see what kind of Saharan air masses are in the way of coming storms? This site offers satellite views of the dry air and satellite loops.

Cool stuff: There's a map of Saharan air and detailed views of steering currents that guide tropical storms, though you might need your brainiac sister-in-law with a Ph.D. to decipher exactly what you're seeing.

www.srh.noaa.gov/tbw/html/tbw

This is your good, old-fashioned National Weather Service site based in Ruskin.

Cool stuff: Once a watch or warning is issued, meteorologists produce a local hurricane statement that details what to expect and when in the Tampa Bay area.

www.wunderground.com/tropical

This extensive tropical weather page on The Weather Underground has an exhaustive list of links for satellite views, water temperatures, shear, water vapor and other weather-related sites. There also are weather discussions by Jeff Masters and a blogger's paradise to comment on the weather and outlooks.

Cool stuff: Lots of it. Among the links is a forecast for wind shear showing areas ranging from favorable to unfavorable shear for developing storms. Also, an archive by year and storm shows hurricane tracks back to 1851.

www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/genesis.html

From the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Services, this page analyzes satellite data of current conditions and historical normal climate conditions, and it shows the difference. Some of the stuff is Ph.D. level, but a couple of the listings can be useful.

Cool stuff: A map shows the amount of wind shear in current and normal conditions and the difference, as well as the probability of tropical storm formation. Farther down the page are graphs showing the same information compared with normal conditions. These graphs are divided into regions such as the Gulf of Mexico, western Caribbean, eastern Caribbean and tropical Atlantic.

www.indo.com/distance

Although this isn't a hurricane site, it calculates the distance between two points using either longitude and latitude or city name.

Cool stuff: Type in your city and the storm's forecast longitude and latitude to find out how far away the storm is.