Volume XIII, Issue 34, August 12, 2013

The Hurricane Herald is the arbitrarily periodical 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; it has been over eight years since that time. 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 in the nine months since December 2012. Various information detailing the project's progress in a similar timeframe can be found in the WikiProject's 2013 State of the Project Report. This edition's editor and author is TheAustinMan (talk · contribs).

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.

← 32 · 33 · 34 · 35 · 36 →

Storm of the month (edition) – Cyclone Evan

Cyclone Evan was considered the worst tropical cyclone to affect Samoa in the southwestern Pacific Ocean in 22 years. Forming out of a tropical depression within the South Pacific Convergence Zone on December 9, Evan tracked eastward and eventually strengthened Category 3 tropical cyclone as it stalled and looped back southward in the vicinity of the Samoas, where its intense winds disrupted communications and destroyed infrastructure; damage there amounted to A$200 million, and 14 persons were killed. Effects were also felt in Wallis and Futuna.

After moving southward, Evan paralleled the Fijian islands to the west during December 16–17 at peak intensity. There, considerable damage was reported. Trees and power lines were downed across the island group. Damage there amounted to FJ$169.9 million, with short-term losses amounting to FJ$73.4 million. Evan persisted until December 24, by which time its remnants brought heavy rains to New Zealand. Overall, Cyclone Evan caused the equivalent of $315.8 million in damage and 14 deaths, making it the costliest and deadliest tropical cyclone of the 2012–13 South Pacific cyclone season.

Recent storms of the month
Edition Storm
33 Hurricane Sandy
32 –
31 Hurricane Frank

Other tropical cyclone activity

In terms of barometric pressure, Typhoon Utor is the strongest tropical cyclone world wide since Typhoon Jelawat last year.
  • North Atlantic Ocean – Although ahead of schedule, the North Atlantic has thus far had featured four tropical storms. Two of these, Andrea and Barry made landfall; the latter is the season's strongest storm thus far.
  • Australian region – The Australian region cyclone season closed with 10 tropical cyclones, making it slightly below average. A bulk of the season's activity occurred between January and February. Cyclone Narelle, which caused torrential rainfall across Indonesia and isolated thunderstorms in Western Australia was the season's strongest. Cyclone Oswald triggered a deadly and destructive flood that caused at least A$2.4 billion in damage.
  • North Indian Ocean – As is usual, the north Indian has been relatively quiet, with the sole storm of tropical cyclone intensity, Mahasen, impacting Bangladesh and Myanmar and causing 107 deaths.
  • Southwest Indian Ocean – Activity in the southwestern Indian Ocean was evenly distributed across the months of the season, featuring seven tropical cyclones and three intense tropical cyclones. While most storms stayed away from land, some, including cyclones Dumile, Felleng, and Haruna impacted land; the latter was the most destructive and killed 24 people after making an unusual track eastward across southern Madagascar.
  • Northeast Pacific Ocean – The 2013 Pacific hurricane season got off to a quick start in 2013 with two tropical cyclones developing in May, only the fifth occurrence of such event; the latter would make the easternmost Pacific landfall in recorded history. There have been eight tropical storms and six hurricanes so far. Tropical Storm Flossie threatened to make landfall on Hawaii but eventually passed to the north.
  • Northwest Pacific Ocean – As usual, the western Pacific has been continuously producing tropical cyclones since January 1 this year. The strongest of these tropical cyclones so far is Utor, which as of this printing is within the South China Sea after bearing down on Luzon.
  • Southwest Pacific Ocean – The southern Pacific was generally inactive, with five tropical cyclones. The strongest of these was Cyclone Freda, which threatened to significantly impact New Caledonia but fortunately weakened before doing so. Cyclone Evan was the season's most destructive tropical cyclone, and severely impacted Samoa and Fiji.

New WikiProject Members

More information can be found here. This list lists members who have joined/rejoined the WikiProject since the release of the last issue on November 23, 2012. Sorted chronologically. Struckout users denote users who have left or have been banned.

Member of the month (edition) – Hurricanehink / 12george1

Due to the far reaching coverage of this edition of The Hurricane Herald, this issue's Member of the Month will be co-awarded to the users Hurricanehink (talk · contribs) and 12george1 (talk · contribs). Both users have made contributions unmatched by any other user of the WikiProject during the period of December 2012–August 2013. Hurricanehink was the primary contributor to the 1950s Atlantic Good Topic project, with numerous high quality articles including Hurricane Hattie and Hurricane Diane, the former of which is a Featured article and the latter of which is at Featured article candidacy.

12george1, also known as GeorgeC, has been the leading representative of the WikiProject in WikiCup 2013, and has written an astonishing 33 good articles. Some of his latest works include contributions to the latter part of the 19th century in the North Atlantic basin, as well as other contributions to season articles in the Atlantic across multiple years.

Latest WikiProject Alerts

The following are the latest article developments as updated by AAlertBot, as of the publishing of this issue. Due to the bot workings, some of these updates may seem out of place; nonetheless, they are included here.

Did you know

Featured list candidates

Good article nominees

Good article reassessments

Articles to be merged

(18 more...)

Articles to be split

WikiProject Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

Tropical Storm Erick has long been the subject of great controversy.

Since December 2012, WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has made huge strides in its improvement of tropical cyclone coverage across the globe. During the first quarter of 2013, editors of the project collaborated together to vastly improve articles in the 1950s of the Atlantic. Though the project took a few months, much progress was made, and each year of the 1950s is now a Good topic, making it the first time that a decade of tropical cyclones was made entirely out of good or featured articles.

On February 27, 2013, the article Tropical Storm Erick (2007), a featured article and long the subject of much controversy within the WikiProject, was finally merged by TropicalAnalystwx13 (talk · contribs). This marked a landmark decision that has changed the mindset of the WikiProject towards articles of low notability. The storied debates and discussion on the article from its creation to the present is documented on the article's talk page and the associated request for comment.

You may have noticed that our season buttons template, a navigational template listed at the bottom of our season articles, has drastically changed. This is the result of a discussion that occurred on the featured list candidacy page for Timeline of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season. Discussion on the template's WP:ACCESS issue can be found here and here.

On April 21, 2013, all seasons once listed at 1980–85 Southern Hemisphere tropical cyclone seasons were split off to their respective season-basin specific articles, capping an improved focus on tropical cyclone articles in the Southern Hemisphere, a trend which began in 2011 and 2012. And, to go along with this, the southwest Indian Ocean has passed the western Pacific in terms of collective Wikiwork average. Kudos to those who worked in the SWIO!

More recently, Jeffrey Gu, a now inactive WPTC member, has been the confirmed sockmaster of numerous socks that have caused vandalism on many of the current and more recent WPTC articles. Though his prior socks have been banned, he continues to evade account creation blocks. We request that you be on the look out for new users vandalizing our pages. More details on his associated sockpuppet investigations can be found here and here.

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.

Tropical cyclone articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low NA Total
FA 5 13 58 49 125
FL 3 26 25 54
FM 10 10
A 1 13 55 51 120
GA 6 30 198 363 597
B 2 6 21 16 45
C 4 42 100 84 230
Start 2 63 264 252 581
Stub 12 97 77 186
Current 4 4 8
Future 1 1 2
Category 577 577
Disambig 2 1 10 620 633
File 7 7
Portal 6 6
Project 1 6 11 18
Redirect 1 16 17
Template 5 13 229 247
NA 1 1
Assessed 20 185 836 967 1,512 3,520
Total 20 185 836 967 1,512 3,520

About the assessment scale →

From the Main Page

From the Main Page documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page since December 2012, in chronological order.

Today's Featured Article

In addition, there were numerous Did you know? entries on the Main Page. Though not on the Main Page, one of our users, Hurricanehink, was one of the interviewees in the WikiProject report for the eighth issue of the Wikipedia Signpost.

Featured Content

This section lists content that have become featured, articles and lists, since the last issue.

Articles
Lists
A-Class Content

This section lists content that have been promoted to A-class since the last issue.

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.

More