Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Newsletter/Archive 40

Volume XL, Issue 40, May 1, 2020

The Hurricane Herald is the semi-regular newsletter of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The newsletter aims to provide in summary the recent activities and developments of the WikiProject, in addition to global tropical cyclone activity. The Hurricane Herald has been running since its first edition ran on June 4, 2006. If you wish to receive or discontinue subscription to this newsletter, please visit the mailing list. This issue of The Hurricane Herald covers all project related events from March 17 to April 30, 2020. This edition's editor and author is Hurricanehink.

Please visit this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve the newsletter and other cyclone-related articles. Past editions can be viewed here.

From the Main Page

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WikiProject Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

Map plotting the track and the intensity of the storm, according to the Saffir–Simpson scale

There is a proposal to redo the tropical cyclone maps. The new maps will be zoomable, include intermediate advisory points (the current map only lists six-hour positions), and information on intensity and date when you hover over the location. There is a discussion on how to implement different scales from around the world, which would replace the current model of using JTWC data, with coloring from the Saffir-Simpson scale.
There has been an increase in editor activity lately (perhaps because we're all stuck inside), resulting in a significant number of new featured and good articles. Editors with good or featured articles since the last newsletter include 12george1, ‎Cyclonebiskit, Hurricanehink, Hurricane Noah, Jo-Jo Eumerus, Juliancolton, Nova Crystallis, TropicalAnalystwx13, and Yellow Evan. We thank these editors, and for everyone else who contributes positively to Wikipedia's coverage of tropical cyclones.
An awards program for the project began last year. It involves 25 levels that may be gained by earning points for completing various actions such as getting good or featured articles. Additional awards will be added in the future.
In April 2020, the most popular article in the project was the Hurricane Katrina, with about 3,399 daily views, followed by tropical cyclone with 2,097 daily views, and Beaufort scale, with 1,685 daily views. Hurricane Dorian remains popularly viewed, six months after it devastated the Bahamas, as is the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season. Rounding out the top 10 are March TFA Hurricane Hattie (and the season article); Coriolis force, the mechanism for storms having their spin; El Niño, and Hurricane Sandy.
There is still an ongoing featured article review for the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, which recently was reformatted to look like the every other season article.
There is a discussion about getting rid of redirect and list-class, replacing the latter with the assessment we use for all other articles.

New articles since the last newsletter include:

1973 Flores cyclone
List of Alabama hurricanes (first WPTC article written by new-ish member Chicdat!)
List of Category 1 Australian region tropical cyclones
List of Category 2 Australian region tropical cyclones
List of Category 3 Australian region severe tropical cyclones
List of South-West Indian Ocean intense tropical cyclones

New GA's include:

WikiProject To-Do

Here are some tasks you can do:

Requests: 1936 Mid-Atlantic hurricane, List of Eastern Pacific tropical depressions and other intensity lists, Typhoon Yancy (1990), 1971 Odisha cyclone, Cyclone Gervaise, Cyclone Uma, more
Wikify: Make sure tropical cyclone lists, such as List of Texas hurricanes, have storm articles properly linked
Cleanup: Hurricane Rita, Hurricane Wilma, Tropical Storm Fay (2002), Tropical cyclones in 2017
Expand: Indianola Hurricane of 1886, Typhoon Nina (1975), Typhoon Durian, Tropical cyclones in 2016/2015/2014, List of Eastern Pacific tropical storms, Pacific hurricane season timelines
Stubs: 1876 Bengal cyclone, 1978 Sri Lanka cyclone, Cyclone Prema, List of off-season Australian region tropical cyclones, List of Texas hurricanes (pre-1900), Typhoon Fred (1994), more...
WPTC 15th Anniversary push: some goals for the 15th year of WPTC include the creation or improvement of many other articles listed in the first section on the WPTC talk page.

Project Goals & Progress

The following is the current progress on the three milestone goals set by the WikiProject as of this publishing. They can be found, updated, at the main WikiProject page.

250 featured pages: 91.2% complete

150 featured articles: 79.5% complete

1500 good articles: 73.1% complete

Storms of the month over the last year
Month	Storm
February 2020	Cyclone Damien
January 2020	Cyclone Tino
December 2019	Cyclone Ambali
November 2019	Cyclone Bulbul
October 2019	Typhoon Hagibis
September 2019	Hurricane Dorian
August 2019	Typhoon Lekima (2019)
July 2019	Hurricane Barry (2019)
June 2019	Cyclone Kenneth
May 2019	Cyclone Idai

Storm of the month and other tropical activity for March

Cyclone Herold (not to be confused with April's storm of the month) was an intense tropical cyclone in the southwest Indian Ocean. It formed near northeastern Madagascar, where its flooding killed five people. Herold later passed between the islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues before becoming extratropical.
Special thanks to Chicdat for helping write this newsletter's storm of the month!

Australia - the month began with Cyclone Ferdinand dissipating off northwest Australia. Several days later, a tropical low struck Western Australia, and Tropical Cyclone Gretel formed northeast of Queensland, later exiting into the South Pacific. There, the storm brushed New Caledonia with gusty winds and locally heavy rainfall. The month ended with another tropical low near Papua New Guinea.

Member of the month (edition) – TropicalAnalystwx13

TropicalAnalystwx13 first joined Wikipedia in September 2010. A long-time writer, TropicalAnalystwx13 (or TAWX13) is a prolific writer about tropical cyclones and tornadoes. Since the last newsletter, he worked on Hurricane Humberto (2019), now a featured article, as well as good articles for Tropical Storm Olga (2019), 1938 Atlantic hurricane season, and 1934 Atlantic hurricane season. We thank TropicalAnalystwx13 for his many edits, and hope he keeps up the good work!

New WikiProject Members since the last newsletter

More information can be found here. This list lists members who have joined/rejoined the WikiProject since the release of the last issue. Sorted chronologically.

Rd003 (talk · contribs)
Hurricaneboy23

To our new members: welcome to the project, and happy editing! Feel free to check the to-do list at the bottom right of the newsletter for things that you might want to work on. To our veteran members: thank you for your edits and your tireless contributions!

Featured Content

From March 17 to present, five featured articles were promoted:

There are currently three featured article candidates:

From the Main Page documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page from March 17–April 30, 2020 in chronological order.

Did you know...?

April 3 - Typhoon Emma (1959)
April 4 - Paleotempestology

Storms around the world, by Jason Rees
Over the last few months, the project has started to dip its toe into several other types of articles away from the traditional season, storm and timeline articles. These articles include lists on what tropical cyclones existed in which year, tropical cyclone by intensity and tropical cyclones affecting a certain territory, island nation etc. The hope is that these articles will be developed over the next few months to the point, where they get used by the international community.

We have had some early success with this goal with information from Category 5 South Pacific severe tropical cyclones being used by a Facebook page after Cyclone Harold. However, we need help developing these articles since there are approximately 150 countries impacted by tropical cyclones and there are approximately 15 tropical cyclones off all intensities per basin per year. You can help by finding resources for us to use, going through IBTRACS and the various databases published by the warning centres or even helping to expand the various articles.

''Opinion piece - , by Chicdat

As a reader: I first became interested in hurricanes when the buzz on Hurricane Dorian making landfall in the Bahamas came out at the end of August 2019. I was interested to know more about Dorian, but not too much. I went onto the solution page: 2019 Atlantic hurricane season, one of the first pages I saw on Wikipedia (that's where I got my signature, 🐔Chic dat ^ChickenDatabase, the Chicken links to 2019 AHS). As hurricane season continued, I "experienced" every single storm from Dorian to Sebastien. After hurricane season in the Atlantic ended, I turned my eyes to the Southern Hemisphere. By the beginning of 2020, I was even delving into FAs, GAs, and stubs.
As an IP: By late January 2020, I began questioning sharing my knowledge with the rest of Wikipedia, and on February 3, me my IP made what I believe was my first Wikipedia edit as an IP. However, many users were following the "All IPs are vandals, so let's revert their edits!" rule (e.g. here). Any coincidence that just 5 hours later...?
As Chicdat: Five hours after I was given a violation of the WP:IPs are humans too rule, I decided to create an account. I like chickens, and I had a database that I used for their egg production, which I call CHICDAT (Chicken Database), so I chose the username Chicdat. Not long after that, I made my first edit as Chicdat. On March 18, I created my first article, List of Alabama hurricanes. On February 24, I became an autoconfirmed user, and on March 19, I became extended confirmed. In late March, I created my first userspace draft, User:Chicdat/Cyclone Herold. In other words, that is how I became a Wikipedia user! 🐔Chic dat ^ChickenDatabase

Current assessment table

Assessments valid as of this printing. Depending on when you may be viewing this newsletter, the table may be outdated. See here for the latest, most up to date statistics.
As of this issue, there are 157 featured articles and 70 featured lists. There are 135 A-class articles, and 996 good articles. There are only 65 B-class articles, perhaps because because most articles of that quality already passed a GA review. There are 369 C-class articles, 736 start-class articles, and 151 stub-class articles, with 31 lists, and 8 current articles. These figures mean that slightly more than half of the project is rated a GA or better.

About the assessment scale →

Storm of the month and other tropical activity for April

Cyclone Harold was a Category 5 storm on both the Saffir-Simpson and the Australian scale. The storm formed near the Solomon Islands on April 1, where high waves drowned 27 people on the MV Taimareho ferry. Near peak intensity, Harold struck the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, causing widespread damage and disruptions amid the ongoing pandemic, as well as two deaths. Harold later passed south of the main island of Fiji, resulting in power outages and one fatality. The storm subsequently passed just south of Tonga, causing power outages and high tides.
Special thanks to Hurricaneboy23, Jason Rees, and TheAustinMan for helping write 94% of this newsletter's storm of the month!

Eastern Pacific - Tropical Depression One-E formed on April 25 southwest of Mexico, becoming the earliest tropical cyclone in the basin (east of 140°W and north of the equator). The depression dissipated a day after formation.
South-west Indian - toward the beginning of April, Cyclone Irondro formed southwest of Diego Garcia and moved to the southeast, becoming an intense tropical cyclone before weakening and becoming extratropical near the boundary with the Australian basin. In the middle of the month, Tropical Storm Jeruto originated in the Australian basin and took a southwest trajectory over open waters, dissipating on April 16.

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