Volume IL, Issue 49, August 11, 2024
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The Hurricane Herald: 2024 Paris Summer Olympics Special Edition!

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 your subscription to this newsletter, please visit the mailing list. This issue of The Hurricane Herald covers all project-related events this year, plus future goals. This edition's editors and authors is Hurricanehink and TheNuggeteer. 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.

WikiProject Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

  • When Tropical Storm Alberto formed in June of this year, there was a large discussion involving members of the project, as well as input from the Wikipedia community at large, with a Administrator's noticeboard discussion, and a discussion on the season article's talk page, over the current storm section. For more than a decade, and possibly longer, the tradition was to have current storm information included in the season articles, as well as if a storm had its own article. That meant that, for years, articles were meticulously kept up to date, but perhaps that meant editors were more focused on being the first to update the storm position/intensity, rather than adding more important information. We ended up getting a great trial when Hurricane Beryl ripped through the Caribbean and United Stats last month, causing 64 deaths and billions in damage. If you haven't read the article, I encourage you to check it out. The article is well-sourced, thorough, and very informative, thanks to 85 different editors adding information that will last the test of time, rather than rushing to add current information that will soon be outdated. This editor has been on Wikipedia long enough to see articles barely getting updated with any kind of source. It appears that this discussion led to a much better outcome. I'd like to note that I was personally against it, and can see I was wrong.
  • There is still an ongoing effort to replace every track map around the world with the proper color. Longtime editors might remember various discussions updating the colors, and there are occasionally grumpy people online who miss the old colors. That is not an excuse to relitigate the endless discussions that led to the colors being properly compliant. So to do the various editors adding new and old storm track maps, thank you, and please keep up the good work as we expand our coverage to more and more storms.
  • There is an ongoing task force dedicated to the yearly coverage of various weather articles. This includes articles such as Tropical cyclones in 1991. As a long-term project, there should be these types of articles going back to 1900. Having them all be featured articles would be especially useful, as that would require citations, as well as information such as deaths and damage totals for each storm. For a lot of years, that information doesn't exist on Wikipedia. For example, there was a good article review started recently on 1982 Pacific typhoon season, which was once considered pretty good, but it falls short compared to other season articles, lacking impact information or info from various warning centers. Season articles only go back so far, and a lot are incomplete depending on which basin you choose.

New good articles since the last newsletter include: New good articles since the last newsletter include:

2005 Atlantic hurricane season topic

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season will have its one year anniversary in 2025. The season was one of the busiest and most destructive, including the notorious hurricanes Hurricane Katrina and Wilma. There is a collaboration for the various articles in the 2005 season to improve it to a featured topic by its 20 year anniversary. There is an active FAC - Hurricane Cindy (2005) - and recently, several sub-articles were merged into Hurricane Dennis to help improve that article. There are also some discussions involving article mergers on Katrina's talk page.

Deterioation of existing featured/good articles Over the last few years, we have lost several featured and good articles. Among the loss of featured articles include Tropical Storm Allison, hurricanes Danny (1997), Esther, Gloria, Irene, Juan, and Nora, plus the Meteorological history of Hurricane Dean, Numerical weather prediction, and Surface weather analysis. Most of these are quite old, so it makes sense they wouldn't be up to featured status, but that means that 2003 Atlantic hurricane season, the 1997 Pacific hurricane season, and Hurricane Dean are no longer featured topics.


Mass-move regarding title conventions, by TheNuggeteer


On September 12, an editor named KN2731 posted a discussion on the WikiProject talk page. The rationale states: "Recently, Effects of Hurricane Sandy in New England was moved to Hurricane Sandy in New England. A discussion took place at Talk:Hurricane Sandy in New England#Requested move 21 August 2023 on whether the title should be moved back per WP:CONSISTENT, and it ended with a consensus that the new title (without "Effects of") was preferred to the old title as it improves WP:CONCISION without sacrificing clarity." With this move, the editor was confused and posted a move proposal on the talk page with a total of 82 articles enclosed in the move.

The discussion lasted for a week, with good points enclosed. Some of the points regard:

  • Oppose:
  • Removing "Effect of" changes the meaning.
  • The change confuses the reader by making the reader believe there's met history and other uneccesary parts.
  • "Conciseness cannot come at the cost of precision."
  • Support:
  • Per WP:CONSICE
  • The old name would assume the effects are stated in the article.
  • Removing "Effect of" does not change the meaning.

After a long back-and-forth discussion, with a total of 17 editors participating in the discussion. The discussion was closed by Elli as oppose with the rationale: "There are some good arguments on both sides here, and a roughly equal numerical balance, but the arguments against are stronger, with many in opposition bringing up an increase in ambiguity to various titles, as well as inaccuracy in some of the proposed titles." 🍗TheNuggeteer🍗 12:14, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Early typhoon seasons, by TheNuggeteer


In September 2005, Hurricanehink uploaded the first pre-2000 Typhoon season article. Over the following months, 50 season articles were made, and then a hiatus started. Six good articles were recorded in 2008 and 2009, and multiple season articles were steadily made. In 2024, Hurricanehink decided to speed up the operations. He later created five articles, the most since 2017. Ever since then, I joined the group and tried expanding older season articles.

Even though operations are slow, you can still help with a lending a hand. You can help me, Hurricanehink, and other participants in finishing this project and opening up another chapter in season articles. More information can be found here. 🍗TheNuggeteer🍗 11:43, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Members of the month (Editor's Pick) – Tails Wx and Dylan620


In this edition of Hurricane Herald, I (TheNuggeteer, one of the Hurricane Herald editors) am going to award Tails Wx and Dylan620 with my pick. Both are new and great editors and I'm excited to see them in this edition. Tails Wx surprised the community with his tireless work in making 11 good articles. one featured article candidate, and 26,697 edits. Dylan620, on the other hand, helped 9 season timelines to be featured lists, a whopping 11% of all the featured lists in the WikiProject. With these lists, he made four DYKs.

WikiProject To-Do

  1. Make the 2017 Pacific typhoon season into a good topic. Three good articles were made, with two of them appearing this year. You can see better information here.
  2. Create early season articles, as seen above.
  3. Help reference 2024 season articles, with multiple IPs adding unreferenced content.
Featured Content

From 2021 to 2024 the following featured articles were promoted:

From the Main Page: Documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page from May 2021 to August 2024 in chronological order.

Today's Featured Article/List

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.
  1. ElenaCyclone (talk · contribs)
  2. CyclonicStormYutu (talk · contribs)
  3. Hurricane4235 (talk · contribs)
  4. Dylan620 (talk · contribs)
  5. HavocPlayz (talk · contribs)
  6. Tails Wx (talk · contribs)
  7. Dziban303 (talk · contribs)
  8. Daniel boxs (talk · contribs)
  9. Layah50 (talk · contribs)
  10. CarterStormTracking (talk · contribs)

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!

Current assessment table


As of this issue, there are 161 featured articles and 80 featured lists. There are 3 A-class articles, and 1124 good articles. There are only 169 B-class articles, perhaps because because most articles of that quality already passed a GA review. There are 652 C-class articles, 810 start-class articles, and 141 stub-class articles, with 1121 lists, and 0 current articles. These figures mean that slightly more than half of the project is rated a GA or better. Typhoon Warren was the 1000th GA in the project.

About the assessment scale →

Project Goals & Progress


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

Article of the Month: 2018 Pacific hurricane season


The 2002 Pacific typhoon season was a slightly above average Pacific typhoon season, producing twenty-six named storms, fifteen becoming typhoons, and eight super typhoons. It had an ACE over 400 units, making it one of the most active seasons worldwide. It was an event in the annual cycle of tropical cyclone formation, in which tropical cyclones form in the western Pacific Ocean. The season ran throughout 2002, though most tropical cyclones typically develop between May and October. The season's first named storm, Tapah, developed on January 11, while the season's last named storm, Pongsona, dissipated on December 11. The season's first typhoon, Mitag, reached typhoon status on March 1, and became the first super typhoon of the year four days later.

The scope of this article is limited to the Pacific Ocean to the north of the equator between 100°E and 180th meridian. Within the northwestern Pacific Ocean, there are two agencies which assign names to tropical cyclones which can often result in a cyclone having two names. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) will name a tropical cyclone if it has 10-minute sustained wind speeds of at least 65 km/h (40 mph) anywhere in the basin, while the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) assigns names to tropical cyclones which are active in the Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR), located between 135°E and 115°E and between 5°N–25°N, regardless of whether or not a tropical cyclone has already been given a name by the JMA. Tropical depressions that are monitored by the United States' Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) are given a number with a "W" suffix.