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Number 20, September 6, 2008

The Hurricane Herald

This is the monthly newsletter of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The Hurricane Herald aims to give a summary, both of the activities of the WikiProject and global tropical cyclone activity. If you wish to change how you receive this newsletter, or no longer wish to receive it, please add your username to the appropriate section on the mailing list. This newsletter covers all of August 2008.

Please visit this page and bookmark any suggestions of interest to you. This will help improve monitoring of the WikiProject's articles.

Storm of the month

Hurricane Gustav at landfall in western Cuba at peak strength
Hurricane Gustav at landfall in western Cuba at peak strength

Hurricane Gustav was a deadly and damaging hurricane which formed late in the month in the Caribbean Sea. It first struck Haiti on August 26 as a minimal hurricane, where it killed 76 people and damaged or destroyed over 10,000 houses. Gustav turned to the southwest, moving over Jamaica where it killed 11 people. The hurricane rapidly intensified to reach peak winds of 150 mph (240 km/h) before making landfall on western Cuba; in the country, Gustav damaged or destroyed over 100,000 houses, though no deaths were reported due to well-executed evacuations. In the Gulf of Mexico, Gustav weakened due to its previous land interaction, and on September 1 it made landfall in south-central Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane, where it caused heavy damage. Across its path, the hurricane caused 101 deaths, with an initial damage total of $20 billion.

Other tropical cyclone activity

  • Atlantic Ocean– In addition to Gustav, three other tropical cyclones formed. Early in the month, Tropical Storm Edouard caused light damage when it moved ashore along Texas. In the middle of the month, Tropical Storm Fay formed over Hispaniola and later crossed over Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico; throughout the Caribbean it caused 25 deaths. Fay struck southwestern Florida, moved across the state, turned to the west, and moved across the Florida panhandle, making a record four landfalls on the state. The storm dropped 27.65 inches (702.1 mm) of rain in Melbourne, making Fay the fourth wettest Florida tropical cyclone. In the end of the month, Hurricane Hanna formed northeast of the Lesser Antilles; its impact will be covered in the next month's summary.
  • Eastern Pacific Ocean – Four named storms developed in the basin during the month, including Tropical Storm Kika, which was the first Central Pacific tropical cyclone since Ioke in 2006. Hurricane Hernan was the strongest hurricane of the month in the basin, reaching Category 3 status while remaining away from land. Tropical Storm Iselle lasted for a few days, but did not affect land. Tropical Storm Julio made landfall on Baja California Sur, producing heavy rainfall and causing two deaths.
  • Northwestern Pacific Ocean – The month began with Tropical Storm Kammuri forming and hitting southern China; the storm killed 140 people, mostly in neighboring Vietnam, and damage totaled $120 million (USD). Tropical Storms Phanfone and Vongfone lasted for a few days out at sea, before Typhoon Nuri formed and struck northern Luzon, causing 12 deaths.
  • 2008 North Indian Ocean cyclone season – A depression formed and struck Odisha.

Member of the month

Cyclone barnstar
Cyclone barnstar

The August member of the month is Cyclonebiskit, who has been on Wikipedia since April. The user helped maintain the current season articles as well as storm articles. Cyclonebiskit has written one GA, and wrote much of one of the recent tropical cyclone articles.

New and improved articles

Storm article statistics

Grade May Jun Jul Aug
FA 41 41 42 46
A 17 18 18 18
GA 129 135 139 147
B 101 96 15 15
C 0 3 98 99
Start 209 208 202 197
Stub 9 9 10 15
Total 506 510 524 537
ω 2.88 2.87 2.94 2.92
percentage
≥Less than C 		43.1 42.5 40.5 39.5
percentage
≥GA or better 		37.0 38.0 38.0 39.3

Version 0.7
This month, several of the WikiProject's articles were selected for the Version 1.0 Editorial Team's Version 0.7 static release. The article selection occurs using an automated process using WikiProjects' quality and importance assessments. For WPTC, this means that 29 articles will be part of this release, an increase from 13 in the previous release. It should be noted that these numbers are based on preliminary data that can change based on updates to the database and corrections to the selection algorithm and WP:1.0's cut-off score.

The list of articles chosen for the release can be seen here. Of the selection, almost half of the articles are already featured, and eleven are good articles. There one B-Class article (1970 Bhola cyclone, two C-Class articles (Hurricane Andrew, Cyclone Nargis), and two Start-Class articles (Pacific typhoon, Hurricane Rita). As these articles will be published in a CD, it is imperative that the project improve them quickly.

The full list of all the WikiProject's articles is also available here. According to that list, WPTC's highest-scoring article—Tropical cyclone—has a score of 1969, which is very good as Canada, the selection's highest-scoring article, has a score of 2,409. That said, Extreme wind warning is the least important article we have, with a score of 227, so we may have to improve it a little bit so it isn't that low...

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