Number 1, June 4, 2006

The Hurricane Herald

Storm of the month

Typhoon Chanchu was the first typhoon and first super typhoon of the 2006 Pacific typhoon season. Forming on May 9 over the open western Pacific Ocean, Chanchu moved over the Philippines on the 11th. There, it dropped heavy rainfall, causing mudslides, crop damage, and 41 deaths. It moved into the South China Sea, where it rapidly strengthened to a super typhoon on May 14, one of only two super typhoons recorded in the sea. It turned to the north, weakened, and struck the Fujian province of China as a minimal typhoon on the 17th. The typhoon flooded 192 houses, while heavy rainfall caused deadly mudslides. In China, Chanchu caused at least 25 deaths and $480 million in damage (2006 USD). Elsewhere on its path, strong waves from the typhoon sank eleven Vietnamese ships, killing at least 44 people. In Taiwan, heavy rainfall killed two people, while in Japan, severe waves killed one person and injured another.

Other tropical cyclone activity

• Tropical Storm Aletta existed in the eastern Pacific Ocean from May 25 to May 29, peaking as a 45 mph tropical storm.

New and improved articles

• New storm articles include: Typhoon Joan (1970), Hurricane Bonnie (1986), Tropical Storm Matthew (2004), Storm of October 1804, Typhoon Chanchu (2006) and Cyclone Olaf.

• New non-storm articles include: Tropical cyclone rainfall climatology, Dvorak technique and List of Bangladesh tropical cyclones.

• New Featured articles: 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, Hurricane Mitch, Hurricane Irene (2005) and Hurricane Claudette (2003)

• Articles which became A/GA class: Hurricane Katrina (A), Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans (A), Hurricane Felix (1995) (GA), Cyclone Percy (A), Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 (A), List of New Jersey hurricanes (A), Hurricane John (1994) (A), Tropical Storm Isabel (1985) (GA), Tropical Storm Odette (2003) (GA)

New articles and improvements wanted

• An article is requested on subtropical ridge
• The current collaboration of the fortnight is Hurricane Gilbert, please help improve this article.
• Improvements are requested to Indianola Hurricane of 1886, Hurricane Camille and Hurricane Andrew.
• The WikiProject is likely to submit Hurricane John (1994) and Hurricane Katrina to Featured Article Candidates in the near future, so please help improve them to featured standard.

Member of the month

The May member of the month is TitoXD. The WikiProject awards this to him for his brilliant work in improving articles. TitoXD joined the WikiProject in October just after it had been founded. Since then he has contributed substantially to many articles, for example Hurricane Nora (1997), which is currently a Featured Article Candidate. He is also actively involved in the assessment of articles and so helps to improve many more articles.

Explanation of content

If you have a topic which is not directly related to any specific article but is relevant to the WikiProject bring it up on the Newsletters talk page, and it will probably be included in a future edition of The Hurricane Herald.

These two sections are decided by the community on the newsletter's talk page:

• Storm of the month: This is determined by a straw poll on the page. While all storms will be mentioned on the newsletter, the selected storm will be described in more detail.
• Member of the month: Nominations are made on the talk page, voting is by secret ballot; read the talk page for details. The winner receives the WikiProject's barnstar (when we make it).

Main Page content

• 2005 Atlantic hurricane season appeared on the Main Page as Today's Featured Article on June 1.
• Hurricane Floyd will appear on the Main Page as Today's Featured Article on June 17.
• Entries from Dvorak technique, Typhoon Joan (1970), Typhoon Chanchu (2006), and Storm of October 1804 appeared on the Main Page in the Did you know column during May.
• Entries from 5 other articles relating to tropical cyclones had appeared in the Did you know column earlier in 2006.

Storm article statistics

Grade	April	May	June
FA	7	7	10
A	4	5	7
GA	0	3	5
B	62	66	82
Start	154	177	168
Stub	13	12	10
Total	240	263	282
percentage ≥Less than B	69.6	71.6	63.1

The assessment scale

• The cyclone assessment scale is one of the bases of the new assessment scale for Version 1.0 of Wikipedia. It splits articles into several categories by quality, to identify which articles are "finished" and which ones still need to be improved.
• The assessment scale by itself counts of several grades:
  • FA: reserved for articles that have been identified as featured content only.
  • A: this grade is given to articles that are considered ready for Wikipedia:peer review. The way to get this grade assigned to an article is by asking other cyclone editors at the WikiProject's assessment page.
  • GA: reserved for articles that have passed a good article nomination.
  • B: these articles are "halfway there", and have most of the details of a complete article, yet it still has significant gaps in its coverage.
  • Start: articles that fall in this category have a decent amount of content, yet it is weak in many areas. Be bold and feel free to improve them!
  • Stub: these articles are mostly placeholders, and may in some cases be useless for the reader. It needs a lot of work to be brought to A-Class level.
• The way to use these assessments is by adding a parameter to the WikiProject template on the articles talk page (((hurricane|class=B)) as an example). This feeds the article into a category which is read and parsed to create an assessment table, summary and log.