Talk:Tornado outbreak sequence of April 28 – May 2, 1953

Requested move 15 February 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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April–May 1953 tornado outbreak sequence → Tornado outbreak sequence of April 28-May 2, 1953 – Other outbreaks in April and May 1953, title is too vague. 173.251.82.226 (talk) 21:38, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Comment: Per MOS:DATERANGE, the dates should be written with a spaced endash: Tornado outbreak sequence of April 28 – May 2, 1953. HandsomeFella (talk) 22:20, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Upgrade to C-class

@Halls4521, CapeVerdeWave, and Destroyeraa: I want to nominate this article as well as the Hurricane Isbell tornado outbreak to C-class, but I don't know how. Help! ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:47, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Tornado outbreak sequence of April 28 – May 2, 1953/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 22:24, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:24, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

No images to review.

• Most of the first part of the "Confirmed tornadoes" section is unsourced.
• "The second low absorbed the third one turned back north and occluded on April 30": can we get a link for "occluded"? Non-experts won't know what it means. Similarly for dryline.
• Under the April 29 listed you say the NCEI dated one of the tornadoes as April 9. This seems unlikely, to say the least. Typo?
• "The tornado may have occurred at 06:30 UTC rather than 18:30 UTC according to the CDNS report": how can the uncertainty be as much as 12 hours?
• Why are there conflicting damage totals such as in the 4/30 F3? Is it worth explaining to the reader what the possible conflicts are in the sources? I ask because in cases where you dno't mention a conflict, we state the value as if it were definite. If in fact the sources are not necessarily full reliable on this number, we should let the reader know that.
• "as it struck the city farm": what is a city farm?
• You have a few adjectives that are unnecessary: "Terrific winds that well exceeded 100 miles per hour"; the reader can tell they're terrific from the speed. Similarly in "as the violent tornado severely damaged or destroyed 340 residences" we don't need violent; ditto for "violent F4 tornado" -- has anyone ever seen a non-violent F4? Have a look through to see where you can cut these.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:41, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Progress:

•  Done The source was the same for all the information, so I just put the same source behind the sentence.
•  Done Link added.
•  Not done Surprisingly, no. I was working on the Tornadoes of 1953 article and this is where I found the discrepancy. The NCEI did a TERRIBLE job entering some of this data in. It appears that the tornadoes that were on April 29 were combined and slotted into April 9 by mistake. Its weird, but that was what I found.
• Same as above. The CDNS report says the event occurred at 12:30 am CST, but NCEI puts it 12:30 pm CST. The NCEI, again, totally screwed up this report.
•  Done Whoops. I thought a note for that was already there. I just added it in. Sorry. I also removed the CDNS damage total since all it does is make this confusing.
• CDNS report said it was a city farm. Their terminology back then is WAY different than it is now.
•  Half done The phrase "violent F4/EF4/IF4 tornado" and "F5/EF5/IF5 tornado" is actually common practice. Not everyone knows these terms, which is why I use them. Additionally, the "terrific winds" were directly quoted from the CDNS report and not an adjective I used. That being said, there are adjectives that I can remove because of redundancy.

I'm also looking at adding an aftermath section. Thank you very much for your review. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 23:58, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

• For the April 9 date, perhaps we can ignore the summary page you're citing, which looks like a typo, and instead cite p. 104 here, which gets it right?
• I don't think we should include a term like "city farm" that we don't understand. I had a look through some 1950s sources for the term and it doesn't seem to have been used much.

OK on the adjectives. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:18, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

• I'm not sure what you mean by that. Can you explain?
• I guess so. Their are A LOT of cases like this back in mid-20th century that have terms like this.

ChessEric (talk · contribs) 18:32, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

If you click on that link and go to the "page 109" pulldown in Google Books, then back up a few pages, you'll see the day-by-day summary for April 1953. In that summary they get it right: "Lane Count, Kans./29/ 3 p.m./70 yd path/.../2 tornadoes sighted...southwest of Dighton ... northwest of Dighton". So we don't need to use the reference with the typo that says April 9. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:55, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Ah. Gotcha.ChessEric (talk · contribs) 21:12, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: I think this is ready for a final review. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 01:19, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Sorry about the delay replying to your ping; I had some other GA reviews where I needed to respond as well.

• I see you've removed the comment about the CDNS saying April 9, but you're still citing the page (p. 37) of the CDNS that has the error, rather than the link I suggested. I would imagine you need both in order to give the reader both sets of information. And you don't give a page number; I think page numbers would be best because you're citing to a whole book even though the link does go to the right place.
• Given that these more detailed listings seem to get it right, while the summaries apparently make mistakes, I think it would be worth finding the equivalent detailed listings for the other two "may have" errors you list. You might be able to eliminate those too. You could add a footnote if you're concerned about the discrepancy; after all if you cite p. 37 the reader who follows the link will see it doesn't match the article.

I see there's a new Aftermath section. A couple of comments:

• "At the time of the event, the city had 12 sirens, but none were located on the base itself": suggest "on Georgia/Robins AFB itself" since it's been a while since we mentioned the base.
• Of the four cites at the end of the section, the two to Twitter appear to be wrong in any case and are an unreliable source, and can you say why a forum posting in Stormwatch would be a reliable source?

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:28, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

•  Done Whoops. I forgot to do that. I believe the NCEI is actually in the wrong here, but since its the official source, it has to stay that way.
• I'm not sure what you mean by that exactly. I will admit that it is hard to single out areas in the CDNS report because the PDF is uncitable, the Google Book isn't easy to navigate, and I'm not the best citer, but it was the best I could do given the circumstances. If you could help me figure out how to better cite things like this, I would greatly appreciate it.
•  Done
•  Half done The forum has a picture in it with a newspaper clipping that gets the story right. I can try to find in newspaper archive as well. However, I could not find a source that talks about this mistake.

ChessEric (talk · contribs) 17:56, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

For the sources, I'd be happy to help. I started looking at the PDF but now I have confused myself; can you point me to where the NCEI makes the error again? E.g. to where they say April 9 for the two Dighton sightings? All I can find is the correct date of April 29 so I must be looking in the wrong place. Re the forum: here is a clipping of the news story, so we can cite the newspaper directly. I don't think anything from the forum itself is usable, unfortunately. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:29, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

The NCEI appeared to either misread the what the information in the CDNS report or had a typo entering the data (this is a chronic and annoying problem with doing these articles on past tornado events in the mid-1900s). The tornado was entered into April 9 instead of April 29 and was combined into one. I don't know why that is, but because I use the NCEI as the official source, I have no choice, but to enter it in that way.

I first made this article in May 2020 and at the time, I was new to Wikipedia and didn't know how to properly research information. As a result, my articles were based solely on the paths provided by the NCEI and Tornado History Project, which has since been taken down for whatever reason, as well as information from Grazulis that was entered in by CapeVerdeWave. I eventually found the NCEI's archive database with both the Storm Data reports and the CDNS report, which allowed me to put in more information. It was October 2020, when I found the two Dighton tornadoes in CDNS report for April 1953. The practice is that when a tornado is put into the CDNS report, but not officially listed by the NCEI, we do not add it to the tornado table and instead list it at the top of the confirmed tornadoes section. In this way, although we do not officially count the tornado, we do acknowledge that it was listed in a trusted source that was used by the NCEI. At the time I entered that information, I didn't think much of it. However, the discrepancy finally came to head in June 2022.

I'm currently working adding damage information on the main tornado pages to both describe the event and to identify any major differences between the NCEI and the CDNS report. This is when I linked the differences together. I was This is the NCEI report of the Dighton tornado that supposedly occurred on April 9. The CDNS report didn't give any information on this tornado for that, but it did show a tornado event that seemed to match up with up with it for April 29. It was the same location as the second tornado listed in the entry. The NCEI probably did not include the first tornado listed because the report said it didn't touchdown (the CDNS report for some reason would sometimes list events as tornadoes, but would say they didn't touchdown, which would make a funnel cloud instead of a tornado). However, the person who entered it into the database appeared to have made a typo and not add the '2' into the date. As a result, this tornado was given a date of April 9 instead of April 29. I'm sorry that this was such a long explanation, but it didn't seem like just a short explanation would really explain the problem.

In regards to the sources, I would very much like help with individualizing which page goes to each event. Also, the forum was the only source I could currently find that talks about the myth of who captured the Warner Robins tornado on film.

One last thing: I may add a little more info to the aftermath section. This new information would be for the aftermath of the Clay County, Alabama F4 tornado as well as a possible expansion of the Warner Robins F4 tornado aftermath. Thanks for your patience in this GA process. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 19:28, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

No problem; I'm enjoying trying to help. I've got a couple of other GA reviews going and I am going to try to make a map for one of them which will probably mean I won't respond further today unless it goes faster than I think. I'll post back here soon. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:18, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

That went quicker than I thought -- I made a map with Google Maps for my own use that clarified what was needed. So one thing that occurs to me is to contact the NCEI and point out the error, citing the CDNS report as evidence. If it's a typo I think they'd probably be glad to fix it. They have a specific email for climate data records: ncei.redr.info@noaa.gov. In the meantime, I understand that the WikiProject might have made a decision to treat the NCEI as gospel, but when it's a clear error wouldn't it be sensible to just give the right information and maybe add a footnote explaining why it's clear it's a typo in the NCEI data?

Having said that, as far as I can see the article is correct now in that it doesn't give the April 9 date anywhere, does it? Or am I just not seeing it? If the April 9 date is gone, that's good enough for GA for me.

Re the aftermath, I think you can't cite Stormtrack, and unfortunately will have to go with only the data you can cite to the newspapers.

Re citations, linking to specific pages in Google Books is a dark art and I am not sure how much I can help. Give me a specific one you'd like to fix and I'll see if I can figure it out. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:59, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

ChessEric, just checking in -- I think the ball is in your court on a couple of these. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

It is. I've been a little busy lately as college just started back up. I'll answer your questions in a little bit. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 17:24, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

No problem, just wanted to touch base. I'll ping you again in a week; I'm sure you're pretty busy right now. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:59, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

ChessEric, checking in again. I can leave this open for another week if you like, or would it be better to fail it now so you can work on it at your leisure, and renominate it when you're ready? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:07, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

I have some time today, so I will get some done today. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 17:36, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Answering your questions here:

• Unfortunately, the info came before the switch from the F-scale to the EF-scale, and from what I've seen, the NWS doesn't mess with any info from before the change.
• April 9 date is gone.
• Can you help me by citing the newspaper in the article.
• It appears that the problem I had regarding the sources in the table have been solved by fellow editor CapeVerdeWave, who I've relied on for help for these events, especially for when I first got on Wikipedia.

Thanks for your patience. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 01:15, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I had a look at the newspaper articles you cite, and realized you don't have newspaper.com clippings -- the rarenewspapers site only shows you part of the article, so it's not the best source. I have access to did some searching and I think I have some useful sources for you. Here are the links to the clippings, along with the markup for citing the first one since you asked for the right way to cite them. The others would be formatted pretty much identically.

• [1] -- {{Cite news |date=May 2, 1953 |title=Warner Robins Tornado Toll Reaches 18 Dead, 300 Injured |page=1-A |agency=Associated Press |work=The Montgomery Advertiser |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/109409048/warner-robins-tornado-toll/ |access-date=September 12, 2022 |via=Newspapers.com}}
• [2]
• [3]
• [4]

Sorry to suggest this again, but I again think it might be best to fail this to give you time to integrate this material. There are probably plenty more newspaper stories which could be used; you can get free access through the Wikipedia library and I think it would really benefit this article. If you have trouble getting access let me know and I can do some searches for you. I confess I hadn't noticed before how little the article used newspaper coverage and I now think it needs to in order to satisfy the "broad coverage" requirement of the GA criteria. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:45, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: Sammi Brie suggested the same thing when she was looking over another GAN article that I was fixing up along side of this one as well as third. I saw newspaper archive when I went on the Wikipedia Library, but I've since entered the Discord so I think I can access newspapers.com now. When I get the chance, I will go in there. One quick question though: Where in the article would like me to put in more newspaper sources? ChessEric (talk · contribs) 16:01, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I can't say where you'd add the information -- you would have to read all the newspaper articles you can find and figure out what they might be used for. Many will be duplicates of the same AP stories, so there won't be as many as an initial search might reveal, but given I found four just for Warner Robins I think you have a bit of reading to do. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:07, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm a little confused by what you mean by that as I deemed the answer as somewhat vague. Do you want newspaper info for the damage info, aftermath, or both? I can tell you that finding newspaper entries for some of these tornadoes will be hard as they don't always discuss the tornado in question and/or say a tornado caused damage at a certain place when the event in reality was caused by strong straight-line winds. I'm not saying its impossible to find sources for them, but I need a little bit more descriptive answer so I know what I'm doing. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 18:05, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it's vague, but that's because neither of us have read the newspaper sources yet, so it's impossible to say what is in them. For example, suppose there's a story in one of them about how a pet dog finds a survivor under rubble, or about an entire family being killed in the wreck of their house, or a more detailed accounting of the damage in a particular area, or an eye witness account with quotes, or a story about the impact on local businesses in the aftermath. Any of those might be worth adding, but I've no idea whether there's anything like that in the newspaper accounts. What I'm saying is that the research on this is incomplete until you've searched for and read those newspaper stories. It's possible you'll find nothing worth adding, though I doubt that, but my concern is not that particular facts are missing, but that we don't know whether facts are missing. Sammi, since I gather you made a similar comment to ChessEric at another GA, can you comment? I think it would be best to fail this GAN so ChessEric can do that research and renominate. (I'd be happy to pick it up for another review as soon as it's renominated, so there wouldn't be a delay; I'm just saying this sort of work should not be done at GAN.) Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:22, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Mike Christie That would be consistent with how I handled the 1951 GA. It was failed and renominated—basically pulled from circulation while the new newspaper content was integrated. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 19:16, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the input. ChessEric, I'm going to fail this GA; as I said, let me know when you renominate it if you would like me to review it again and I'll try to get to it quickly. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:23, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Ahhhhhhh...I understand now. I'm a little sad at the fail, but honestly, I thinks its for the best as, like I said last week, college has started back up and I need time that I don't necessarily have to go over this stuff. Once I look for more information I will renominate this. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 20:32, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: I said this an another article I was getting a GA review on, but the NCEI sucks sometimes. The locations of the F3 and F4 tornadoes in the San Antonio area on April 28 are COMPLETELY off. Thank God I have Grazulis data to straighten this out. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 21:43, 27 September 2022 (UTC)