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Performance Tracking  > 2014 Hurricane Season

WebSitePulse 2014 Hurricane Season Web Performance and Uptime Report


Planning a vacation in Florida or the Caribbean? Before you go to the beach, however, you might want to consider that the hurricane season has just began, and you need to stay alert during the months from August until November.

Experts say that during a typical hurricane season, there are usually 12 tropical storms, 6 of which turn into hurricanes with winds of 74 mph or greater and 3 are hurricane category 3 or higher with winds of at least 111 mph.

In addition, up until now, Florida has a record of 8 years without a landfalling hurricane of category 3 or higher. And most experts are predicting a tamer-than-usual hurricane season for 2014.
The best way to stay informed is in no doubt the regular checking of websites that post real-time weather forecasts and information in case of emergency.

Organizations which provide life-saving instructions during natural disasters are aware that people’s lives could depend on their websites’ flawless performance, and that is why they are going the extra mile to keep their websites’ response time close to zero seconds and the availability - 100%. Still, however, even those websites could experience technical difficulties at times due to the extremely high web traffic.

That is why we decided to monitor 5 of the most used websites for natural disasters and emergency situations. We will report their availability and uptime daily, throughout the whole season as this information may be useful to those having technical issues while using any of the monitored websites, or would like to check the time it’s taking to load a page of any of the websites and thus - how fast s/he could access the content.

The Reports reflect the most common performance criteria: response time and availability - but in-debt analytical information is also collected and stored in the WebSitePulse system for future references.

An RSS feed from the daily Reports is added for more convenience for those interested in the performance of the monitored websites.

Daily Report for November 03, 2014See report for:


WebSitePulse reports the following results from web performance measurement of the Hurricane- and disaster-related websites:

The daily Average Response time from all monitored websites was 1.156 sec.

The Average Response time as measured from the US East Coast (Trumbull, CT) was: 1.873 sec.
The Average Response time as measured from the US West Coast (San Francisco, CA) was:0.992 sec.
The Average Response time as measured from the US Central was (Chicago, IL):0.603 sec.

The Best Response time measured from US East Coast (Trumbull, CT):0.231 sec.
The Best Response time measured from US West Coast (San Francisco, CA):0.355 sec.
The Best Response time measured from US Central was (Chicago, IL):0.238 sec.

The typical shopping transaction took the least time for redcross.org visitors - 0.298 sec., while the visitors of salvationarmy.org had to be the most patient, as the shopping transaction there took in average of 3.093 sec.
Two of the monitored websites delivered above-the-average response times for their transactions, while three of them demonstrated below-the-average daily performance.

The daily average uptime for the entire Group was 99.98%.

The Average Uptime as measured from the US East Coast (Washington, DC) was:99.95%
The Average Uptime as measured from the US West Coast (San Francisco, CA) was:100.00%
The Average Uptime as measured from the US Central (Chicago, IL):100.00%

Four websites were available with no interruptions - 100%.
Four websites' availability was above the average, while one site dragged the average down with below-the-average availability.

Report Highlights

No events of particular importance or possible negative impact on the online visitors' interaction with the Websites included into the 2014 Hurricane Season report were detected during the reported period, and according to WebSitePulse, the Group delivered the expected levels of End-User experience and Customer satisfaction.

Please, scroll down for Detailed Reports and Charts provided by WebSitePulse:

Daily Response Times
Legend:
    nhc.noaa.gov     weather     redcross.org     floridadisaster.org     salvationarmy.org 

Average Response Times for November 03, 2014
#TargetTrumbullSan FranciscoChicagoAvg. resp. time
1redcross.org0.2310.3550.3070.298
2nhc.noaa.gov0.3260.4310.2830.347
3weather.com0.6690.7860.6890.715
4floridadisaster.org0.8181.6641.4971.326
5salvationarmy.org7.3191.7220.2383.093

Average Response Times August 01, 2014 - November 03, 2014
#TargetTrumbullSan FranciscoChicagoAvg. resp. time
1nhc.noaa.gov0.3520.4620.3510.388
2redcross.org0.4450.6310.4400.505
3weather.com0.5620.7520.5460.620
4floridadisaster.org0.8891.7771.4021.356
5salvationarmy.org6.1850.6580.3912.411



Hourly Average Response Times
Select individual website to display:


Legend:
    individual site response times     monitored group average response times 


Average response times by hour for November 03, 2014
TargetHours
000102030405060708091011121314151617181920212223
floridadisaster.org1.531.541.211.311.241.341.301.261.141.42--------------
nhc.noaa.gov0.500.450.320.260.290.290.420.270.400.280.39-------------
redcross.org0.450.290.260.300.270.250.260.270.280.280.39-------------
salvationarmy.org4.411.694.156.270.670.223.303.372.165.160.26-------------
weather0.730.610.680.850.890.750.620.760.620.491.25-------------


Average response times by hour August 01, 2014 - November 03, 2014
TargetHours
000102030405060708091011121314151617181920212223
floridadisaster.org1.341.321.342.711.371.341.311.281.291.261.271.261.261.271.281.261.231.351.231.241.251.411.311.34
nhc.noaa.gov0.470.410.330.360.390.340.390.310.360.390.340.360.530.440.410.320.380.440.380.350.360.430.380.43
redcross.org0.420.520.390.360.460.380.430.410.360.500.540.510.670.520.700.600.630.870.600.460.590.410.440.40
salvationarmy.org2.392.362.382.332.542.762.352.452.472.182.342.642.762.382.382.412.352.452.282.532.362.252.202.22
weather0.640.680.660.690.690.630.570.590.570.520.530.590.660.700.560.570.550.630.580.600.650.740.640.62


Uptime

Uptime November 03, 2014
#TargetTrumbullSan FranciscoChicagoAvg. uptime
1floridadisaster.org100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
2nhc.noaa.gov100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
3redcross.org100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
4weather.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
5salvationarmy.org99.740%100.000%100.000%99.913%

Uptime August 01, 2014 - November 03, 2014
#TargetTrumbullSan FranciscoChicagoAvg. uptime
1redcross.org99.998%100.000%100.000%99.999%
2nhc.noaa.gov99.998%99.996%99.989%99.994%
3weather.com99.996%99.994%99.983%99.991%
4salvationarmy.org99.696%99.931%99.921%99.850%
5floridadisaster.org99.846%99.847%99.852%99.848%

Methodology:
WebSitePulse Performance Reports measure Uptime and Response Time as the most important metrics for the availability and the reliability of any web-based operation. Performance measurement takes place daily, every 15 minutes during the entire Hurricane season. The WebSitePulse website monitoring service is used to collect data and to create the reports.
The simultaneous monitoring is performed from 3 US locations of the WebSitePulse monitoring network: Trumbull, CT, San Francisco, CA and Chicago, IL. In case of a detected malfunction or unavailability, the system performs automated error verification from 3 independent resources and only after the above procedure is performed and has returned consistent results, the detected error is confirmed, recorded, and included in the daily performance reports. In these cases, an advanced WebSitePulse exclusive feature comes into play - Forced Monitoring - which automatically switches to a 3 minute - monitoring interval for increased accuracy.

About WebSitePulse:
WebSitePulse is a leading provider of global, independent, and objective availability and performance monitoring of web sites, servers, network components, web applications, e-business- and email round-trip transactions.

Contact:
For more information about this report please contact:
George T., CTO
phone: 1-407-380-1600
email:


Reproduction:
WebSitePulse launched the Performance and Uptime Reports program to keep the general public and the Internet community informed about the performance of specific websites and the challenges their webmasters, owners and operators are facing on a daily basis, especially when the web traffic intensifies due to some special events through the year. Some of the most popular web destinations, related to each particular event, are selected for the purpose of the Reports, and data from their performance measurements is made available on the WebSitePulse public website.

With the intention to broadly disseminate this information for the benefit of the Internet community, we encourage the use of this information without prior approval and under the following Terms and Conditions:
  • WebSitePulse should be referred as the "Source" of the information;
  • WebSitePulse should be acknowledged as the owner of the copyrights of the information in the Reports;
  • The texts of the Reports could be changed or altered to better suit the needs and the style of the publisher without prior notice to WebSitePulse. However, the integrity and the meaning of the information should be preserved;

The Data from the performance measurements cannot be changed or manipulated and should be used "as is".