Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Weather/Vital articles

Expansion

If anyone is looking at this talk page, does anyone have any suggestions for what more articles should be included? Particularly, I am speaking of the Southern Hemisphere, which is lacking. --♬♩ Hurricanehink (talk) 02:11, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My Suggestion for vital storm articles would be those storms that caused the name to be retired - ie Katrina 05 - Jason Rees (talk) 22:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, all retired Atlantic, EPAC, and WPAC names are already on the list. ♬♩ Hurricanehink (talk) 01:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Attachment 2B of this WMO Report/Technical Document gives a "list of tropical cyclone names withdrawn from use due to a cyclone's negative impact onone or more countries" for Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Port Moresby, and Nadi. It is current to 2006 (so recent names are missing), and there are four gaps (Helene, Koko, Juliette, and Pate in Nadi's retirement list). Despite these, if a list of SH retired names is needed, you won't get a better list than this. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 04:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Igor?

User:YE and I have been having a big debate on Instant Relay Chat on whether or not Hurricane Igor should be on the list for a vital article. It was the most destructive hurricane to strike the Canadian island of Newfoundland on record, and the third-wettest tropical cyclone in Canadian history. Additionally, it was only the second time that the Meteorological Serve of Canada requested for a hurricane name to be retired. I noticed that Hurricane Karl from the 2010 season was added on to the list as being the most destructive tropical cyclone to strike Veracruz in history. However, it wasn't retired by the WMO in the spring. So, I suggest that either Karl is swapped for Igor (depending on you guys' thoughts), or we just add Igor to the list. Thoughts? – TropicalAnalystwx13 (talk) 00:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Retirement has nothing to do with this. Karl did 27 times as much damage as Igor, and was more deadly. Y E ^Pacific ^Hurricane 00:30, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Igor being added in favor of removing Cesar, as Joan (which affected the same area) was much worse. --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 01:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Juan (which affect the same general region) was worse than Igor. I think Cesar should be replaced with 1933 AHS. Y E ^Pacific ^Hurricane 01:45, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Atlantic retired list by region

New England

Mid-Atlantic

Southeast United States (excluding Florida)

Florida

Hurricane Donna (also Northeast United States)
Hurricane Betsy (also Bahamas and Louisiana)
Hurricane Eloise (also Mid-Atlantic)
Hurricane Andrew (also Louisiana)
Hurricane Opal
Hurricane Charley
Hurricane Wilma (also Mexico)

Gulf Coast (excluding Florida)

Mexico

Cuba

Hurricane Flora (also Hispaniola)
Hurricane Gustav

Hispaniola

Hurricane Inez (also Guadeloupe and Mexico)
Hurricane David (also Florida)
Hurricane Allen (also Texas)
Hurricane Georges (also SE US and Puerto Rico)
Hurricane Jeanne

Puerto Rico

Lesser Antilles

Central America

Canada

Hurricane Hazel (also North Carolina and Haiti)
Hurricane Juan
Hurricane Igor

Bermuda

Hurricane Fabian

Some areas have more storms than others. In particular, Florida and the Gulf Coast have too many, IMO. I propose removing Frances, Dennis, and Gustav. I also propose removing Diana from Mexico, as that wasn't nearly as bad as other Mexican storms listed. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 15:56, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why is Denis listed under Gulf Coast when it was one of the worst Cuba hurricanes? Same With Gustav. Given that these are regarded as the worst Cuba hurricanes, they should stay (or at least one of them). I am iffy on Daiana. Michelle is also borderline IMO. Y E ^Pacific ^Hurricane 17:22, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If Dennis is worse, then we should remove Michelle. And Gustav doesn't seem that bad in Cuba. Regarding Diana, there are several more important Mexican hurricanes. --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 01:33, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Move to include all weather articles?

I think that might be more useful having a list for all weather articles, perhaps around 1000 overall? ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 19:38, 18 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Make 2 separate lists given the shortage of coverage for all weather articles. Y E ^Pacific ^Hurricane 12:49, 9 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Why only two lists? I imagine there could be lists for each weather type. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 00:50, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How many non-TC weather articles do we have? Coverage is pretty scant I imagine pre-2005 or so of major meteorological events. Y E ^Pacific ^Hurricane 04:51, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How about organizing these like how WP does rather than by topic? Below is an example of what I mean for level 1 articles. It would lead to a more well-rounded list. Level 2 could include 0.5% (which is 37 currently; allows for 32 additional articles), level 3 could be 2.5% (which is 183 right now; 146 more), level 4 could be 7.5% (542 currently; 359 more), and level 5 could be 15% (1084 currently; 542 more). Level 1 is set in stone and will not gain articles as our project grows as the amount on top will not grow incrementally. Keep in mind that each lower-level list includes all the levels higher than it (2 includes 1, 3 includes 2 and 1, etc.). If you guys are okay with those figures, I would like to ask for time to propose a populated list and set goals for inclusion. We could tag these with our own vital article template so editors are aware they are vital to our project. Noah^Talk 22:14, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I like that a lot. This vital list is currently 10% of TC articles, so the least important among the list would still be Level 5. That’s a better system than the current Low/Mid/High/Top. The vast majority of articles are still Low/Mid importance, but this system organizes the most important articles. Hurricanehink mobile (talk) 00:51, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Hurricanehink: Buffed the numbers a bit to allow for what we need. Level 2 and 3 caps can decrease to the desired level over time. I will be including articles that don't exist, but are needed, such as Climate of North America and Climate of South America. Absolutely no reason for these to not have articles given the diverse range of climate. I should be able to finish the level 3 list either today or tomorrow. I will propose it for ratification and then after that ask for nominations for levels 4 and 5, which will take a while to fill. Noah^Talk 14:12, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome! I can help w Level 4/5. Hurricanehink mobile (talk) 18:26, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Hurricanehink: The filling of levels 4 and 5 will be different than what I am doing. It will be a nomination process where consensus has to be determined for each entry or group of entries. Each category will have a goal of attaining X articles and the same for subcategories. This will place a limit on how much each topic area can have in order to prevent editorial bias from placing too many articles of one topic on the list. I will choose values for level 4 once I see how much we have for level 3. Noah^Talk 20:52, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TBH I think the nomination process is a bit of an unnecessary step. Also, I'm not sure where you got your percentages for the caps for level 2 and 3. Hurricane Katrina is clearly Level 4. Ditto the 1970 Bhola cyclone. I think before you'd open it up to nominations (which could take a long time), I think you should look at it from a global perspective, recognizing that not every country is the same. The question is then, should it be based on the country's GDP, their Human Development Index, their population? Is death toll the main factor? If so, then droughts and heat waves would take up most of the slots. Or it could be biased toward an older, potentially unreliable source. As Wikipedians know, sometimes the information on Wikipedia isn't exactly complete/100% accurate. It takes lots of research to find out more about specific natural disasters. The low-hanging fruit means that a lot of good and featured content are not the most important articles, which is a shame, because if all of the most important articles were done, then the job of figuring out importance would be a lot easier.

For Level 4, if you focused solely on deaths, then there would be a bias toward older topics, which might not reflect country's improvement in their infrastructure. The aforementioned 1970 Bhola cyclone killed 300,000 at a time when Bangladesh wasn't even a country, but by 2007, Cyclone Sidr caused less than 4% of the deaths despite a similar intensity. The 1931 China floods have been considered one of the deadliest natural disasters of all time, but the actual floods might've only killed 140,000 (along with additional deaths due from famine and disease) - this is lower than Typhoon Nina (1975)'s 229,000 death toll, but that death toll from the related dam failure might've been as low as 26,000. China hasn't had such a high death toll from a tropical cyclone since then. It might be tempting to just go by each natural disaster type and call it a day, but some areas are more susceptible to natural disasters (China and Bangladesh being examples).

I suggest, since we gotta start somewhere, we should focus on events since 1900. That doesn't mean exclude events from before 1900, but it's the sad truth that older events might be cited to inaccurate citations. There should firstly be a focus on G20 nations (the 19 wealthiest nations on Earth as well as the EU) and the 55 most populated countries in the world. I didn't come up with that arbitrarily - Australia is the 55th most populated country, and is the least populated member of the G20. I suspect we might find a lot of overlap when focusing on places such as Mozambique or Germany. Some areas' worst natural disasters might be from a tropical cyclone, or a flood, or a famine affecting a large area. I'm not saying don't focus on other places, especially when some of the deadliest natural disasters occurred in less populated places (Hurricane Mitch comes to mind). Much of this research would be invaluable toward building articles for these countries, such as Floods in China, Typhoons in Japan, or Droughts in the United States. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 02:30, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Hurricanehink:I bloated the percentages to accommodate everything we needed to include with the goal of it reducing to 0.5% and 2.5% as the project grows and new articles aren't added at the higher levels. For example, by the time this project hits 8000 articles, the 0.58% will be down to 0.525% of our articles. We just have to avoid adding articles to those upper levels. It wouldn't have been an issue had we had better coverage of all our disasters across WP. I am trying to get levels 1-3 discussed and ratified first before doing anything on levels 4 and 5. Yes, nominations will likely take a while, but since they can be done in groups (and likely with RFC), it may make it easier to fill the levels. I do agree the focus should be more on modern disasters with more verifiable impact. Keep in mind there will be caps on how much of each subtopic can be included here to prevent one from dominating another. After the first three levels are set, it will take time to determine what these caps will be. Noah^Talk 19:51, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense - the top three levels are much broader in scope than any one event. Well, I guess I'll start a list of Level 4 events that I can think of off the top of my head that shouldn't be too controversial. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 20:13, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep in mind we also have to cover things like Atlantic hurricane and Atlantic hurricane season and their equivalents at level 4 as well. Noah^Talk 20:17, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

True, but at some level, we get to the part of listing actual disasters, and that's the part I'm focusing on/worried about. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 20:31, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1931 China floods - 150,000 deaths and many more from starvation (one of the deadliest floods ever)
1970 Bhola cyclone - 300,000 deaths (deadliest TC worldwide)
1991 Bangladesh cyclone - 138,000 deaths
1999 Vargas mudslide - 11,000 deaths in Venezuela (deadliest in the country)
2010 Pakistan floods - 1,781 deaths in Pakistan (deadliest in the country)
Cyclone Idai - 1,303 deaths in southeast Africa
Cyclone Nargis - 138,000 deaths in Myanmar
Hurricane Katrina - 1,836 deaths and $125 billion in damage in the US
Hurricane Mitch - 11,374 deaths, mostly in Nicaragua and Honduras
Typhoon Nina (1975) - 229,000 deaths in China
Typhoon Vera - 5,000 deaths in Japan

Level 1 Vital Articles

Level 2 Vital Articles

43/42 additional articles listed for level 2. Capped at 0.58% of the project's articles. The goal is for the article cap to reduce to 0.50% as the project's article count increases.

Weather

Atmosphere

Climate

Meteorology

Space weather

Level 3 Vital Articles

Includes 43 articles from level 2. 166/166 additional articles listed for level 3. Capped at 2.9% of the project's articles. The goal is for the cap to reduce to 2.5% over time as the project's article count increases.

Expansion

Igor?

Atlantic retired list by region

Move to include all weather articles?

Level 1 Vital Articles

Level 2 Vital Articles

Level 3 Vital Articles

Weather

Atmosphere

Climate

Meteorology

Space weather