Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Newsletter/Archive 37

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Volume XIV, Issue 39, May 31, 2019

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 almost thirteen 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 from April 14–May 31, 2019. This edition's editor and author is Hurricane Noah (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.

← 34 · 35 · 36 · 37 · 38 →

Article of the month, by Jason Rees

History of tropical cyclone naming - The practice of using names to identify tropical cyclones goes back several centuries, with storms named after places, saints or things they hit before the formal start of naming in each basin. The credit for the first usage of personal names for weather systems is given to the Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, who named tropical cyclones and anticyclones between 1887 and 1907. This system of naming fell into disuse for several years after Wragge retired, until it was revived in the latter part of World War II for the Western Pacific basin. Over the following decades, various naming schemes have been introduced for the world's oceans, including for parts of the Atlantic, Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The majority of these lists are compiled by the World Meteorological Organization's tropical cyclone committee for the region and include names from different cultures as well as languages. Over the years there has been controversy over the names used at various times, with names being dropped for religious and political reasons. For example, female names were exclusively used in the basins at various times between 1945 - 2000 and were the subject of several protests. The names of significant tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean and Australian region are retired from the naming lists and replaced with another name, at meetings of the various tropical cyclone committees.

Storm of the month and other tropical activity

Cyclone Fani was an extremely severe cyclonic storm that made landfall in Odisha, India on May 3. The storm achieved peak intensity as a near Category 5-equivalent cyclone with 3-minute sustained winds of 215 km/h (130 mph), 1-minute sustained winds of 250 km/h (155 mph), and a minimum central pressure of 937 hPa (mbar). Fani caused over $1.8 billion (2019 USD) in damage in India and Bangladesh and killed at least 89 people.

Since the last newsletter, twelve systems have formed.

  • Southwest Indian Ocean
    In the Southwest Indian Ocean, Cyclone Kenneth made landfall in Mozambique approximately 1 month after Cyclone Idai, causing widespread flooding and destruction. Overall, Kenneth killed at least 52 people and caused more than $100 million in damage. Additionally, Tropical Cyclone Lorna formed over the eastern portion of the basin in late April and dissipated in early May without affecting land.
  • Australian Region
    In the Australian Region, cyclones Lili and Ann formed in early May and both affected land. No deaths were reported, although Lili caused moderate damage in the Maluku Islands and East Timor.
  • South Pacific
    In the South Pacific, a tropical depression formed in mid-may, but failed to intensify and dissipated a few days later.
  • South Atlantic
    In the South Atlantic, Subtropical Storm Jaguar formed in late May and lasted for approximately two days before becoming extratropical.
  • Western Pacific
    In the Western Pacific, three weak tropical depressions existed during the first half of May.
  • North Atlantic
    In the North Atlantic, Subtropical Storm Andrea formed on the same day as Jaguar, but failed to intensify and dissipated on the next day.




  • The Eastern Pacific hurricane season began on May 15.
  • The Atlantic hurricane season will begin at 2:00 AM EDT on June 1.
  • The Central Pacific hurricane season will begin sometime after 12:00 AM HST on June 1.
Recent storms of the month
Edition Storm
36 Cyclone Idai
35 Typhoon Wutip (2019)

New WikiProject Members since the last newsletter in April 2019

More information can be found here. This list lists members who have joined/rejoined the WikiProject since the release of the last issue in April 2019. Sorted chronologically. Struckout users denote users who have left or have been banned.

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!

Editorial for welcoming new users, by Hurricanehink

Every year, editors new and old help maintain the new season of season articles. The older users are likely used to the standards of the project, such as how to Wikilink and reference properly. Newer users might make mistakes, and they might make them over and over again if they don't know better. If anyone (who happens to read this) comes across a new user, please don't bite, because with enough pushback, they'll decide that this group of editors is too mean, and unfun. This is all a volunteer project; no one can force anyone to do anything. We're all on here because of our love of knowledge and tropical cyclones. If you find someone new, consider using the official WPTC welcome template - Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Welcome.

I also encourage that if you know any tropical cyclone researchers, please speak up and try recruiting them to edit. Veteran editors can't keep editing forever. Life gets busy, and the real world beckons!

Member of the month (edition) – Yellow Evan

Yellow Evan has been involved with WPTC since 2008. Since the last newsletter, Yellow Evan has taken 5 typhoon articles to good article status as well as created 2 more. Overall, he has created and/or significantly contributed to more than 130 good articles. Your work in the Western Pacific Basin is invaluable... Thank you for your contributions!

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.

Featured list candidates

Featured topic candidates

Good article nominees

Articles to be merged

(2 more...)

Articles for creation

Featured Content

This section lists content that have become featured, articles and lists, since the past newsletter in mid-April 2019.
From April 14–May 31, 2019, 1 featured article was promoted:

WikiProject Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

  • An awards program for the project began on May 31. 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.
  • As of this news letter, there are more articles ranked a good article or better (1317) than articles ranked B-class or worse (1272), for the first time in the project's history.
  • Every Atlantic hurricane season from 1945 to 2007 is rated at least a GA. That is an impressive feat, and an incredibly body of work among many editors.
  • Cyclone Raja became the 150th featured article in the project. Thanks to all of the editors and their tireless edits for writing 2.7% of all of Wikipedia's featured articles.
  • In the 24 hours after Hurricane Michael's TCR was released, the article on the hurricane was edited 82 times by 18 different users.
  • In March 2019, the most popular article in the project was Cyclone Idai, viewed 231,969 times during the month. The generic cyclone was 2nd most popular, with 131,080 views. In 3rd place was Hurricane Katrina with 112,283 views. Included in the top 20 were the 2018 and 19 Atlantic hurricane seasons, hurricanes Michael, Florence, Irma, Maria, and Harvey, and the 1896 Cedar Keys hurricane, which was TFA on March 20th.

New articles since the last newsletter include:

New GA's include:

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 150 featured articles and 69 featured lists. There are 142 A-class articles, but that number is subject to change, depending if we mandate that all A-class articles have an A-class review first. There are 956 good articles, meaning it is possible we get to our 1000th GA by the end of the year. There are only 61 B-class articles, perhaps because because most articles of that quality already passed a GA review. There are 350 C-class articles, 720 start-class articles, and 141 stub-class articles, with 29 lists and 8 current articles. The number of lists may decrease further as the "Tropical cyclone X" articles continue to be reclassified as set index articles. These figures mean that nearly half of the project is rated a GA or better - including the lists/current/future articles, there are 1272 articles that are below GA status, versus 1317 that are GA or better.

About the assessment scale →

From the Main Page

From the Main Page documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page from April 14–May 31, 2019 in chronological order.

Today's Featured Article
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WikiProject To-Do


Here are some tasks you can do:

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.

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