Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Meteorological history of Hurricane Katrina/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was archived by David Fuchs via FACBot (talk) 5 December 2023 [1].

Meteorological history of Hurricane Katrina

Nominator(s): ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:08, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This article began in the olden days of WP:WPTC and was one of our earlier FAs. Over the decade plus following its promotion, it suffered from article rot. It also fell far below our present standards for a FA and was demoted accordingly. With Hurricane Katrina being one of the most notable tropical cyclones in modern times, it goes without saying the meteorological aspect of it is of great interest and deserves an article of quality. After much research, I believe I have put together the most comprehensive and hopefully digestible piece on the meteorological aspects of Katrina. This article covers the storm's entire life cycle from its complicated origins across the Atlantic basin, to its record intensity in the Gulf of Mexico and subsequent catastrophic landfall, and its ultimate dissipation thereafter. Being a sub-article of the much broader Category:Hurricane Katrina (which spans 190 articles, inclusive of sub-categories), it goes quite in-depth. While a heavy article, I do hope it's an enjoyable read and one that can be understood by most. Thank you all in advance for your time and input. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:08, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Mirokado

~~I will probably not have enough free time for a full review for the next week or two, but~~ I hope these comments will be helpful:

§Lead: "Subsequent interaction with the trough spurred convective development and Tropical Depression Twelve formed over the Bahamas on August 23." TD12 comes as a bit of a surprise here, perhaps "Subsequent interaction with the trough spurred convective development, resulting in the formation of Tropical Depression Twelve over the Bahamas on August 23." would be clearer?
Yes, that feels more clear. Changed to suggested wording. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:00, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
~~§References~~
- ~~Please correct "sfn error: no target: CITEREFIrish_et_al.2003". If you are not seeing this, you can follow the instructions in Help:CS1 errors to enable it.~~
  Corrected that sfn error, the 2003 was supposed to be 2008. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:00, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Several of the citations do not have incoming links from references (warnings from the same CS1 errors setup). Perhaps these should be further reading? -- Mirokado (talk) 20:51, 17 October 2023 (UTC) (tweaked -- Mirokado (talk) 22:59, 18 October 2023 (UTC))[reply]
§Lead: "Deep convection soon blossomed and following the development of banding features as the system intensified into a tropical storm." This sentence is tangled up: please rephrase to clarify (perhaps remove "and"?) -- Mirokado (talk) 19:51, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The stray "as" seemed to be the problem here, removed. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
~~§Origins:~~
- "there was uncertainty over the degree of involvement with the remnants of Ten and the eventual formation of Katrina": please rephrase: something like "there was uncertainty over the degree of involvement of the remnants of Ten with the eventual formation of Katrina". -- Mirokado (talk) 21:03, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  Tweaked to suggested. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- ~~"moving slowly-west-northwest": I would have written "moving slowly west-northwest". Google ngram cannot find the fully hyphenated term.~~
  I think that was just a stray hyphen, removed. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
~~§Initial development and Florida landfall:~~
- "Meteorologists described Katrina as "still...an impressive cyclone." I suggest moving this sentence to the end of the paragraph, so that "... enabled this to take place" refers more directly back to "its overall appearance improved" as intended. -- Mirokado (talk) 22:12, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  Swapped the order. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:27, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  And we no longer needed to duplicate a ref callout. Super. -- Mirokado (talk) 18:57, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- "SSHS": according to the article (Saffir–Simpson scale), SSHS relates to the original scale and SSHWS refers to the reformed wind-only scale. I presume this article is using SSHS as that was current in 2005 and the new definition only became operational on May 15, 2010. I only noticed this since there is a discrepancy between SSHS here and SSHWS in the infobox. Perhaps we can have a brief note about this here. -- Mirokado (talk) 21:40, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  I see this is covered later in §Storm surge, nevertheless it may be a distraction to readers at the first mention. -- Mirokado (talk) 20:57, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  Added a note explaining the difference at the first usage for the sake of clarity. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
§Gulf Coast landfalls: "... at the time. At the time of landfall, ..." We need to avoid this repetition, particularly with no intervening text. I suggest "By landfall, ..." for the second occurrence. -- Mirokado (talk) 21:40, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Changed to suggested wording. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
§Storm surge: "The Mars oil platform ... went through the eastern eyewall of Katrina": no, the platform was not moving. Perhaps something like: "The Mars oil platform—designed to withstand winds of 140 mph (230 km/h) and waves up to 70 ft (21 m)—sustained extensive damage as the eastern eyewall of Katrina passed over it." -- Mirokado (talk) 20:57, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that makes a lot more sense. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
~~§Tornado outbreak and dissipation:~~
- "This led to the separation of the storm's warm core which in turn caused a near-instantaneous transition..." I found it difficult to imagine what was happening: as far as I can tell, the upper-level anticyclone experienced the instantaneous transition and continued onwards towards the east coast and further north: what happened to the warm core? Some rephrasing would help.
  Added some more context to that bit which hopefully clarifies the situation better. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  Much clearer now. Thank you. -- Mirokado (talk) 18:57, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- ~~The four satellite images are helpful. Perhaps we can add a similar sequence for the initial stages? This would help the reader visualise the development.~~
  I took a look through the satellite imagery for the precursor phase and to the untrained eye it won't really help much imo. It's a lot of scattered clouds that don't resemble much and one of the features (the UTT) is not readily visible for the most part. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  Thanks for checking. It's of course OK to omit those images if they would not be helpful. -- Mirokado (talk) 18:57, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
~~§References: Multiple page ranges need the "pp" parameter rather than "p".~~
Corrected these. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This completes my content review (unless I notice anything else later of course.) -- Mirokado (talk) 21:43, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the review, Mirokado! I think I got to everything except the CS1 errors which is confusing me. I'm not the most tech savvy so I'm having issues here. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's OK. Here are the warnings. They indicate citations which are not referenced by a callout in the article content. The citations could be, for example, previously-referenced citations which are no longer needed, general references supporting lots of the content in the article, or items which would be helpful for further reading. I would have one list for the citations a reader jumps to from the References section and another (or others) for anything else, since both: the status of the citations is clear to the reader; and this makes maintenance and completeness checking easier.
Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation. The anchor is named CITEREFDidlake_Jr._and_Houze_Jr.2009.

Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation. The anchor is named CITEREFGreen_et_al.2011.

Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation. The anchor is named CITEREFHowden_et_al.2008.

Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation. The anchor is named CITEREFMcTaggart-Cowan_et_al._(Part_2)2007.

Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation. The anchor is named CITEREFRogers_et_al.2006.

You are free to decide how you organise the citations, but it does help if we can tell that there are none which should have been removed. -- Mirokado (talk) 19:49, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Cyclonebiskit, any response for Mirokado? Gog the Mild (talk) 23:08, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Gog the Mild: I've been drained from work but I should be able to get to things tomorrow. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 07:40, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Mirokado: I've expanded upon information from two of these sources and moved the other three to a "further reading" section. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 20:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, this is what I was hoping you would be able to do. I have moved Didlake & Houze to §Further reading, which I think from the above is what you intended. -- Mirokado (talk) 14:46, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have made a few changes while looking at the source:

moved the Hurricane Katrina navbox to the end of the article: see MOS:LAYOUT and Rationale for placing navboxes at the end of the article.
removed the blank lines in the citation lists: see MOS:LISTS#Use good markup and MOS:ACCESS#Lists. I also added a space after the leading asterisk to make the start of each citation more visible in the source, in a separate edit so the diffs are clearer. -- Mirokado (talk) 14:46, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And a couple more comments:

references: Fierro et al. 2011, McTaggart-Cowan et al., Rappaport et al. 2010: Please remove the thousands-commas from the page numbers for these refs, they are too easily confused with two individual page numbers. There are even some where the comma is followed by a space.
~~§See also: There is an edit preview warning: "Commons category does not match the Commons sitelink on Wikidata – please check". -- Mirokado (talk) 14:46, 14 November 2023 (UTC)~~[reply]
- This is because commons:category:Hurricane Katrina is the more general category for Hurricane Katrina. Looking at Hurricane Katrina tornado outbreak, a satisfactory solution would be to use {{commons|Hurricane Katrina}} rather than {{commonscat|Hurricane Katrina}}. -- Mirokado (talk) 15:31, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  I removed all the confusing commas from the citations and swapped to {{commons|Hurricane Katrina}}. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 18:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  Thanks, looking good now. -- Mirokado (talk) 20:42, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support. This article is a fairly intense read, but there are inline explanations, notes and lots of wikilinks to help the general reader. -- Mirokado (talk) 20:50, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Hurricanehink

Conditional support - I gave the article a thorough review before Cyclonebiskit nominated the article. I agree that this is the most comprehensive and most digestible writeup on the subject matter, which is one of my most important criteria for something being an FA (along with spelling and formatting). The only thing the article needs is to make sure all of the images have working URLs for their links. The Katrina in Florida and the NASA one of the GoM loop current aren't working right now. Also, check the formatting of ref 63. There is a broken bracket. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 17:19, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I honestly have no clue why those two links broke. Added one for the GoM loop current, it's not the original but it has the picture there via a PD source. ~~NWS MFL ref for the radar imagery is broken, not sure where to find a replacement for that exact image.~~ I don't see the broken bracket on #63? ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:00, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Contacted a friend at NHC/NWS MFL and they repaired the broken page link. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:40, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Suggest adding alt text

As above, check that source links are functional. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:52, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Added alt text. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:00, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

CCI check

Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/WikiProject Tropical cyclones 03#Articles 2261 to 2280 does not indicate this article has cleared CCI; please ping me if I should conduct one on talk here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:37, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Cyclonebiskit, any response for Sandy? Gog the Mild (talk) 23:09, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Gog the Mild and SandyGeorgia: I believe this decision is up to FAC coordinators. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 20:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Cyclonebiskit, has there been a check ? WIAFA 1f says Featured articles must comply with copyright policy, and since the article (well, the entire suite of articles) is subject to a CCI, it would need to be cleared. That means going back to check for any old copying within or unattributed PD, as I did here to clear this one at FAR. It's a lot of work (although I've gotten better/faster at it), so I'd rather not engage it until/unless it looks like the article is in promote territory. Let me know. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:09, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Sandy. Cyclone, this has been open for four weeks and has only limited indications that it is moving towards a consensus to promote. Unless there is appreciable further movement over the next two or three days I am afraid that this is liable to be archived. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:10, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Cyclone, if it does end up being archived, then I could do the CCI check at my leisure before you re-approach FAC ... be sure to ping me either way. Good luck, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:59, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, I expect to support once the remaining two comments above are resolved and would appreciate the opportunity to finish with a definite conclusion. -- Mirokado (talk) 16:05, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update; if things continue to progress well here, and nothing hits me IRL, I should have time on Friday 17 to do the CCI work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:41, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've completed most of the work, and added a {{Copied}} to article talk pages for Copying within Wikipedia that dates to 2005. (It has become faster for me to check these articles as I've become more familiar with where and how to look, and now having a base of knowledge about which editors historically frequently failed to attribute.) Once the dead links mentioned below at #Citation checks are cleared up, I can run a final Earwig, and mark this article cleared at the CCI. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:27, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Final earwig pending. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:53, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Citation checks

Checking for citation consistency and correctness here. User:Cyclonebiskit, please deal with Sandy's comments first (and as "straight away" as possible) since they involve the CCI check. -- Mirokado (talk) 00:43, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

While doing my CCI check, I have to make sure all links are live, or Earwig can't detect copyvio (none found so far), but this source is to a dead link, found in archive.org, which is concerning as it is undergraduate research-- probably not a high-quality source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211219212153/https://www.atms.unca.edu/chennon/research/documents/erb_ncur2006_preprint.pdf SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:07, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Something wonky: this goes to Hurricane Rita ??
https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/eye-hurricane-photos-20130809 SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:11, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is a dead link, update pls so I can run Earwig:
https://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/assessments/pdfs/Katrina.pdf SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:15, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
??? http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/ffc/pdf/katrina.pdf Not loading for me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:17, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Law, Kevin (2011). The Impact of Oceanic Heat Content on the Rapid Intensification of Atlantic Hurricanes (Report). Recent Hurricane Research - Climate, Dynamics, and Societal Impacts. Marshall University. pp. 331–354.: please expand this citation to include:
- the article is available as a free-to-read pdf from S2CID 135431285. Marshall University is I think Law's institution. user:SandyGeorgia: I think this will be another url for Earwig.
- it is as far as I can tell a chapter in this ebook Recent Hurricane Research... edited by Anthony Lupo (2011), published by IntechOpen, isbn 978-953-51-4907-1, which is only available behind a paywall despite the publisher's name. -- Mirokado (talk) 23:49, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Lillibridge et al.: dead link. It looks as if this is a problem on the NOAA site, which shows the article in a search by title, but the search link is itself dead. -- Mirokado (talk) 16:38, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
David L. Johnson (June 2006): Another dead link from NOAA. -- Mirokado (talk) 19:41, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]