Data-master John Neslon created this bottoms-up view (looking at the Earth from Antarctica) of every single tropical storm and hurricane we know about, dating back to 1851. It's based on data from NOAA's archives, which include wind speed, storm name, date, and other information. The color of the path is tied to intensity. See the highest resolution on Flickr.

From Nelson's blog, called IDV User Experience:

 

A couple of things stood out to me about this data...

1) Structure.
Hurricanes clearly abhor the equator and fling themselves away from the warm waters of their birth as quickly as they can. Paging Dr. Freud.
The void circling the image is the equator. Hurricanes can never ever cross it.

2) Detection.
Detection has skyrocketed since satellite technology but mostly since we started logging storms in the eastern hemisphere. Also the proportionality of storm severity looks to be getting more consistent year to year with the benefit of more data.