About Us

Force Thirteen is a project run by volunteers which delivers news and updates on tropical cyclones, as well as a large expanse of animations, documentaries, publications and databases pertaining to the subject.

The project portrays itself more as a broadcaster than as a scientific resource, with elements of both apparent within its works.

Presently, the project is looking to expand into more mainstream facets such as more general news, productions pertaining to other scientific fields, and entertainment, with an eventual goal of being able to provide a continuous video streaming service to our audience.

Whilst we have proven that this goal is technically feasible, our lack of personnel and resources mean that it cannot be reasonably maintained for more than 5-7 days at a time.

Our History

The project was officially launched in November 2011 by Nathan Foy (b.1995), though the concept first emerged in the form of past hurricane season animations which proved to be popular as early as September 2010.

In June 2012, the project began to operationally provide updates about tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic, extending to cover the Northwest Pacific in July, the Northeast Pacific in September, the Southern Hemisphere by October, and finally the North Indian Ocean in May 2013.

Updates have been produced for tropical cyclones affecting or projected to affect land worldwide since then.

Force Thirteen launched its website in February 2012 (Wayback archive shows the website in August 2012), and the project was briefly abandoned from late February 2012 until April, when it was picked up again and has remained active ever since.

In early 2013, the channel started showing UK and Ireland weather forecasts, and switched to its own dedicated channel not long later.

These forecasts continued regularly throughout the rest of the winter, and since then have only appeared periodically whenever a significant weather event is occurring.

Breakthrough

In November 2013, what might be considered to be Force Thirteen’s “breakthrough” occurred when the devastating Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the Philippines.

Force Thirteen produced over 15 video updates on the storm and regular updates on the website, attracting over 150,000 views, with peaks of 35 views per minute at times.

Nathan was interviewed about his coverage of the storm on BoltonFM and BBC Radio Manchester on November 13 and 14 respectively (interviews available online on request).

A Force Thirteen video of Haiyan also appeared on Dutch television programme Haart Van Nederland during a charity appeal for the storm victims.

Later that month, Hurricane Week 2013 went out on the channel, and remains to this day the biggest project undertaken on Force Thirteen.

It resulted in six hours of content, 90 days of research and production, including 12-hour working days in the final days leading up to the project.

YouTube Milestone

In November 2014, the Force Thirteen channel reached one million views on the YouTube channel.

This was commemorated with a special best-of feature.

Our Growing Team

In January 2015, Force Thirteen formally became no longer a one-man team, but a bona fide team with several members, and membership grew gradually throughout the year.

Lots of new features began to appear during 2015, including gameshows, live event broadcasting and eventually a live streaming service which intended to run on a 24/7 basis.

It was later decided, after running a 7-day broadcast successfully, that Nathan’s and the team’s resources would be better used elsewhere.

This decision would allow the team to create more music, graphics, and videos that continue to help the project grow even further.

Storm Coverage and Updates

In October 2016, Hurricane Matthew effected the US and Caribbean, and Force Thirteen ran its streaming service for a 104 hour period during the storm, generating record viewing totals of over 400,000 in that week.

In February 2017, Cyclones Carlos and Dineo affected the South-west Indian Ocean, and the channel provided new-look video updates on the storms, with unexpectedly high viewcounts from the countries affected by the storms, including 100,000 in South Africa, and over 35,000 in Mauritius on two separate weeks.

In March 2017, Force Thirteen issued twelve updates and nine hours of live coverage on Cyclone Debbie.

Four of the updates were issued by Force Thirteen Australia, who also issued fifteen updates on the cyclone.

One particular video during Force Thirteen’s coverage of Debbie was recording aboard the International Space Station.

This video was picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald, ABC, MSN, Russia Today, CNN, Buzzfeed, Mashable, and The Guardian, and for a time became the number 1 top trending video on YouTube Australia.

The video has also been used on dozens of other Australian national and local news websites.

The video quickly became the most viewed and most liked video ever on the Force Thirteen channel, amassing over 350,000 viewings.

In June 2017, Force Thirteen issued live coverage on Tropical Storm Bret, reaching an audience of over 6,000 in Trinidad and Tobago alone.

Voluntary Commitments

Initially, Force Thirteen was a one-man team until others joined in 2015.

At present, there are twelve members and dozens of contributors, all of which work voluntarily.

Force Thirteen receives no external funding, and any contributions we do receive goes directly towards improving the quality of our service, such as improving our technical abilities through hardware and software, and hosting the website.