Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Weather/General meteorology task force/Archive 6

Radar image from last weekend

I uploaded this particular radar image from the large Midwest blizzard last weekend. It's a very large file (about 3 MB) but in my opinion very impressive. You can see the whole range of a large winter storm all in one shot, from snow in the north to rain in the middle to thunderstorms in the south and all with the big comma shape. If anyone knows of a good article for this to be placed in, go for it. Otherwise I'll just let it eventually be removed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Feb242007_blizzard.gif Gopher backer 03:55, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Conversion templates

Hello! This is to announce that several templates for automatic conversion between metric and imperial units and for displaying consistently formatted output have been created: {{km to mi}}, {{mi to km}}, {{m to ft}}, {{ft to m}}, {{km2 to mi2}}, {{mi2 to km2}}, {{m2 to ft2}}, and {{ft2 to m2}}. Hopefully, they will be useful to the participants of this WikiProject. The templates are all documented, provide parameters to fine-tune the output, and can be substituted if necessary.

Any suggestions, requests for improvement/features/additional templates, or bug reports are welcome.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:19, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

the yellow bubble incident

I was reading a weather book and saw a question asking: "Do we know everything about electricity? The response was NO! The it said something like this:

• Two young girls were throwing a plastic Frisbee back and forth when it

apparently struck 'some invisible force' and reversed its course immediately. It was like hitting a BRICK WALL that was NOT THERE. Following this the two girls found themselves surrounded by a 'yellow bubble' seemingly akin to the vortex tube. from their perspective INSIDE the tube the girls were able to offer an account of its effects. They were hit by a force that they describe as a MILD ELECTRIC SHOCK and were THROWN to the ground by its strength. They also found it DIFFICULT TO BREATHE, possibly because the air was actually more RAREFIED WITHIN THE FIELD. Fortunately they did not stay inside until the air ran out (as it may well have done in time) but rushed forward and 'broke through' the wall of the 'bubble' to escape. Now I have a theory, by the way there has been several cases like this globally! My theory is....well before I say that on some TV program that had involved making a manmade force field! It happened! At some plastic making place! The worker said, "things like that happen here! It happened not to long-ago here!" I forgot the rest! the plastic place was in South Carolina I believe! so my theory was: the fact that polarized ions are known to displace oxygen. High density electrostatic coupling of the air molecules would make it difficult to breathe in such a dense environment! And so basically electricity had everything to do with this! and you can do it to, at your own risk! Low Humidity, And perfect temperatures will contribute to this! But also something with high static power! so this is a good subject right? --Mr.Taka 17:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Only if there are reputable sources on the phenomenon. -RunningOnBrains 21:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

IS POLICE & witness reports good!--Mr.Taka 12:36, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

No. A good source, if the phenomenon even exists, would be a meteorological paper. Hurricanehink (talk) 13:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Five witnesses to the same car-crash perceive and report it five different (and conflicting) ways. How about a NON-BLURRY video (not subjective). There are lots of video cell phones and camcorders around now. "Incident" not "incedent". Needexercise 03:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Death toll lists

I have noticed a lot of events (esp. tornado outbreaks) have had death toll lists added. I think that is a good idea, with the following notes:

• Don't add a list if the entire death toll took place in one county (or county-equivalent), since it would be redundant and could all fit in the text.
• Likewise, don't add a list if the death toll is less than 10, as it can all be mentioned in the text.
• For tornado events, if there were deaths from other thunderstorm impacts (straight-line winds, flooding, hail or lightning), they should have a separate column, included in the total for the outbreak but not the tornado count. See here for an example. Don't worry about direct and indirect, since almost all severe weather deaths are directly related.
• For all other events, direct and indirect deaths should be mentioned (like with hurricanes).

CrazyC83 18:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Air mass

Does anyone have any ideas as to why this article is continually vandalized? Just curious. Gopher backer 20:34, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

FAR request for Global warming

Global warming has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

- Nick Mks 17:53, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Split of Flint-Worcester Tornadoes

I wanted to get other editors opinions before taking any action here. There has been a long argument as to whether or not this event should be covered by one article or two. It puts us in a tricky situation, as the two events are definitely separate tornado outbreaks, however, they are caused by the same system, and there is precedent within the project to have an outbreak sequence as a single article. Please leave comments at that page's talk page. -RunningOnBrains 17:48, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Climate of India in FAC

Climate of India is a Featured Article candidate. Please leave comments. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 10:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Great Lakes Storm of 1913 FAR

Great Lakes Storm of 1913 has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:53, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Snow removal

Would articles on snow removal and flood prevention come under this project? If so, would they be under "winter storm/floods" or "general meteorology" (as they are not specifically about the weather conditions themselves, but the human response to them)? Laïka 11:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Surface weather analysis added as a FAC

Since people liked it so much over the past several months, figured it was time to try promoting one of our more important articles for FAC. The initial comment has already led to some positive changes. Thegreatdr 20:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

New Subproject

I have been mulling over this for some time, and I believe I am ready to tackle starting a new WikiProject, more specifically, a sub-project of WikiProject Meteorology. As tornadoes and severe storms are my main interest, I would propose that this project be named WikiProject Tornadoes, and would cover tornadoes and other severe weather such as derechos, downbursts, and hailstorms. I believe that it would help me focus my efforts on improving articles about severe weather phenomena, as well as help with standardization and focus. There are currently hundreds of tornado/derecho/other severe storm articles, many/most of which are stubby and disorganized. There are also dozens of deserving tornado events which lack articles.

I'd like to get your guys' input first though, and I'd especially like to know if anyone else would like to join me in working on it. Thanks everyone, RunningOnBrains 21:02, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea, I'll try to help when I can. Gopher backer 04:42, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Great idea!!! I know a lot about them so I can help a lot (although I have done a lot of it already). This will be its parent project. CrazyC83 02:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

If it's going to be all encompassing like that, why not just WikiProject Severe Weather? Just having tornado in there might be confusing, unless your topic is only tornadoes. Thegreatdr 03:17, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

You bring up a good point...I originally wanted to focus only on tornadoes, but then i realized that derecho and hailstorm articles would likely be left behind. I think I will make it into WikiProject Severe Weather. -RunningOnBrains 01:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

The project has been set up. Check it out! -RunningOnBrains 02:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Global weather patterns

World climate simply directs to climate. When I studied geography, a first year class which satisfied the physical sciences requirement, part of the time was spent on the general patterns of the world's climate, rising air near the equator in a humid zone characterized by heavy rain, descending air in two bands north and south of the equator in the zone of the trade winds and subtropical deserts, then a temperate zone characterized by period movement of fronts through them from west to east. We don't seem to have a article which sets forth these general patterns. Fred Bauder 12:47, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

You're right. The Hadley Cell should be included within climate. Thegreatdr 14:10, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Great Storm of 1975 - Multiple infoboxes

If any of you all get the chance, check out the pair of infoboxes within this article. The article is up for GA. It's a cyclone which had both a blizzard and tornado outbreak, which isn't terribly uncommon in the late fall and early spring, and has infoboxes for both. Thegreatdr 19:39, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it is done well...there is little or no duplicate information between the two infoboxes. However, as this does seem to be a fairly common occurance, did you want to try to make a specialized infobox? -RunningOnBrains 22:27, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

It would certainly save space if somehow all the information in the two boxes could be combined into one. Thegreatdr 02:41, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I have made an attempt at a new infobox called cyclone, which should allow information for both tornado outbreaks and blizzards from the same cyclone. I've included it in the 1975 article, and added it to the Meteorology project main page. See what you think of it, it might need some work. Thegreatdr 21:30, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't look like a bad start. I'm not familiar with the infoboxes in use in the (non-TC) meteorological articles. I am pretty experienced at template work and will be able to generate more powerful templates for you, but I'm not going to tackle stylistic concerns. The blizzard and tornado outbreak templates seem to have significant overlap; this suggests a single template for both storm types is appropriate. If you could provide me with a list of the current met templates (to my talk page), I'll look them over and see how to rationalize them. One additional feature I'd look at providing is the automagic calculations that {{Infobox Hurricane}} uses.--Nilfanion (talk) 21:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Weather fronts, cold front, warm front, occluded front, and stationary front

From the past year or so, the surface weather analysis article has had a statement up top that mentioned that cold front redirected to that article. After checking today, this is not so. It turns out we have four orphan stubs which have a short paragraph describing each of the fronts, created in 2004 and forgotten since then. I added meteorology cats to the group, and a meteorology box to the top of their talk pages (which were blank), so our project should more easily be able to find them. Should we make them redirects to the more encompassing weather fronts article, or go ahead with their expansion and make them subarticles for weather fronts? Thegreatdr 15:31, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

For now I'd say merge and redirect them to weather fronts, but each of those topics have the potential to be an article onto themselves.-RunningOnBrains 01:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I think they all warrant articles on their own. Just like dry line has an article. CrazyC83 02:08, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Question: Primitive equations

Can someone have a look at a section someone added to this article on "Primitive equations using sigma coordinate system, polar stereographic projection"? I've commented it out for now and moved it to the talk page after correcting a few things that didn't seem to make sense (e.g. the temperature equation, originally written as ∂T/∂t = u (∂Tx/∂X) + v (∂Ty/∂Y) + w (∂Tz/∂Z) - I have no idea where the T subscripts came from, I figured it would just be the expansion of DT/Dt = 0 ). Thanks. -Loren 07:53, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism

I found a bunch of IP edits to the List of F5 tornadoes page from the past few weeks that look like they could be vandalism, however some edits look like they could have been in good faith (either that, or clever vandalism I guess). Can someone take a look at the changes? Special:Contributions/24.138.29.159 Gopher backer 19:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that page has been eaten up by vandals/good-faith additions. As soon as I get Grazulis's book from the library I'll get to fixing that page.

As another note, the article Super Outbreak has been over-vandalized as well, if someone could look at that I'd appreciate it. -RunningOnBrains 22:15, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

This is where the idea concerning a tornado or severe weather centered project would come in handy. Enough people would get involved in editing, which would add the edited pages to various watchlists, which would prevent that from happening. Thegreatdr 22:20, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

A number of editors have been very good at keeping vandalism and good-faith unsourced edits in check. Given the rapid response to vandalism and unsourced edits, I know that some articles are being watched, however, a good way to keep up with vandalism and unsourced edits is to watch any page you've actively edited, and as many pages as you can conveniently monitor. The more pages being watched and the more people watching them, the more likely that vandalism and unsourced edits will be caught timely and will not get out of hand. Evolauxia 14:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Question: Tornado

Could someone please explain how warm moist air fuels a tornado? There's a jump there I don't quite follow. I can see that warm moist air would rise, cool and perhaps drop precipitation, and the Supercell page "Anatomy of a supercell" shows that the rising air spirals. Why does this fuel the rotation, as opposed to absorbing angular momentum and reducing the rotation? Thank you. Needexercise 04:11, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

If you're still around, I'll try to get to this, although any detailed discussion will be in the tornadogenesis article. Evolauxia 14:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

WMO website updates

The WMO has redesigned their website. At least temporarily, this means that it is impossible to find anything. For example, the Tropical Cyclone Programme home page is entirely populated with dead links. Likewise, almost all of our links to the WMO are 404s... (xposted to WP:WPTC)--Nilfanion (talk) 10:02, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Tornado emergency

I have proposed that this article be merged into Tornado warning. Please join in the discussion at Talk:Tornado warning. Thanks. howcheng {chat} 16:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Assessment for new project

I have written the code at {{severe}} to begin mathbot assessments for the now-separate WikiProject Severe weather. Following precedent set with TC sub-project, I have written the code so that class assessments for severe weather articles will still appear at the meteorology assessment table, but importance assessments will not, as they will undoubtedly be skewed as to the worldview of this project (i.e., higher importance values). I assume this is alright, if anyone has comments/complaints, air them out. Cheers, and help out with the sub-project if you can. -RunningOnBrains 14:00, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation page needed for "White Hurricane"?

Currently White Hurricane redirects to Great Lakes Storm of 1913. However there at least 3 wikipedia articles that use this as a name, the Great Lakes Storm, the Great Blizzard of 1888 and the Storm of the Century (1993). Thoughts? Gopher backer 19:56, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

When in doubt, disambiguate. The point is for people to find what they are looking for, and as you say, they might be looking for any three of those storms. -RunningOnBrains 22:15, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

The inline reference loophole

It seems like I've been on a minor crusade trying to get some of the articles within the meteorology project either referenced at all, or converted to inline references. It appears I have improperly assumed that we all want to continue improving articles within the project. It appears that if you are happy with the current state of a Stub/Start/B class article, that is definitely your call according to the manual of style, which doesn't seem to require inline references from square one. However, if a certain type of citation (like inline references) is needed for an article to become GA or FA class, why not do it early on in an article's life cycle to save a lot of work later in the article's life? I can tell you that a lack on inline citations will generally keep me from updating an article because of all the extra labor it would entail to upgrade its class (see weather forecasting for an article where I just plain gave up trying to find the references which were used to create it in the first place). I imagine others within the project feel the same way. Thegreatdr 03:33, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Not only does inline referencing aid in improving the class of an article, it's also more professional and easier to read. Evolauxia 03:52, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with everything you have to say. I often feel guilty removing large chunks of articles because I just can not find a reference for it, but it has to be done to keep this as a working encyclopedia. -RunningOnBrains 16:55, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Surface weather analysis featured

A major topic featured. Good job, folks. :)

Cordially, from hyperactive little brother, Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 08:05, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

SPC

I added some information to the Storm Prediction Center, and I think that it might be considered as a B Class article. Would someone please review the article?

Thanks, Ks0stm 01:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)