Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Newsletter/Archive 41

Volume XLI, Issue 41, July 1, 2020
←(Previous issues) 38 · 39 · 40 · 41 · 42

The Hurricane Herald: Special Hurricane Season/New SHEM Cyclone Year Edition!

The Hurricane Herald is the semi-regular 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. 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 May 1–July 1, 2020. This edition's editors and authors are Chicdat and Hurricanehink.

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.

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.

2018 Featured Topic


Hurricane Noah recently announced an initiative to get a featured topic for the year of 2018 with complete subtopics. The Eastern Pacific portion is very close to achieving a featured topic, and the Atlantic and North Indian Ocean are around a B-class average. The Western Pacific, Southern Hemisphere, and the global article for 2018 need your help! A lot of work is needed to get those three items up to par. For more information on which articles need specifically, please check out the project talk page. Getting a featured topic for an entire year would be an impressive feat for our project.

Happy New Year by Jason Rees

I want to invite you all to sing Auld Lang Syne with me and open up the egg nog with me as today July 1, 2020, marks the formal start of the 2020-21 tropical cyclone year, as well as the start of the season in the South-West Indian Ocean. As a result, it is a good chance to look back at the previous TC year and look forward to the season starting on November 1. As things stand, it appears that the status of the El Nino Southern Oscillation will either be La Nina or neutral conditions leaning towards La Nina. As a result, I would expect more activity to occur within the Coral Sea, near Queensland rather than out towards French Polynesia. On a social basis, the biggest question this year will be how will the island nations deal will Covid 19 and a major tropical cyclone - assuming it's still around in November. We got an early taster of how Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga will deal with it thanks Severe Tropical Cyclone Harold.


Storms of the month over the last year
Month Storm
April 2020 Cyclone Harold
March 2020 Cyclone Herold
February 2020 Cyclone Damien
January 2020 Cyclone Tino
December 2019 Cyclone Ambali
November 2019 Cyclone Bulbul
October 2019 Typhoon Hagibis
September 2019 Hurricane Dorian
August 2019 Typhoon Lekima (2019)
July 2019 Hurricane Barry (2019)

Storm of the month and other tropical activity for May


Cyclone Amphan was the second Category 5-equivalent tropical cyclone of 2020, and the first tropical cyclone of the 2020 North Indian Ocean cyclone season. It formed in the southern Bay of Bengal, and made landfall on Odisha and Bangladesh, killing 128 people. It was a very strong super cyclonic storm. It was also the costliest North Indian Ocean tropical cyclone in recorded history, shattering the record held by Cyclone Nargis, after it left US$13.6 billion in damage.

Member of the month (edition) – KN2731


KN2731 first joined Wikipedia in 2015, and has contributed to/written 13 good articles in the project. Recently, he has contributed to the project-wide goal of improving tropical cyclones in 2018 to a featured topic, including tropical storms Sanba, Bolaven, and Ewiniar, plus Typhoon Maria. KN2731 has also worked in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific, and contributed to two featured lists – Timeline of the 2015 Pacific hurricane season and List of Category 3 Pacific hurricanes. We thank KN2731 for his many edits, and hope he keeps up the good work!

New WikiProject Members since the last newsletter


More information can be found here. This list lists members who have joined/rejoined the WikiProject since the release of the last issue. Sorted chronologically.

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!

Featured Content

From May 1 to present, two featured articles were promoted:

From the Main Page documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page from May 1–June 30, 2020 in chronological order.

Today's Featured Article/List

There are currently two featured article canidates:

OPINION PIECE, by Chicdat

When a new storm undergoes rapid intensification and makes landfall, the members of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones try hard to create an article for it. Suddenly, the storm goes back out to sea again and makes landfall somewhere different. In one 20-kilobyte edit, Hurricaneboy23, let's say, adds in more information about this landfall, but not before the storm undergoes a cyclonic loop and makes a third landfall. As the article gets huge and bloated, it's split.

The story above is fictional, but things like it happen often, like in Cyclone Amphan's revision history. For Wikipedia to have an accurate coverage of tropical cyclones, there need to be enough members to put the new information — boosted by reliable sources, of course — into the article. So, if you haven't already, go to WP:WPTC/MEMBER and add your name! 🐔Chicdat ChickenDatabase

Burnout - an opinion piece by ♫ Hurricanehink (talk)
I've been editing Wikipedia for a while. I've retired a few times, thinking I would be done for good, but something kept drawing me back. It might be the thrill to be the first one to post an advisory, or if you found a damage total that wasn't in the article, or the thrill of publishing an article and making it the best source of information on a given storm. Those are all great reasons to edit and to continue editing. But while the text we write is just computer code, we all are humans, subjected to outside stresses and the dreaded real life (RL).

When you edit for too long, you might find that you can't finish that list of projects you wanted to work on. It is better to take a break from what you were working on, and try something different (maybe not even weather-related) so that editing becomes enjoyable again. There's no sense getting burned out and stressed. The work will eventually get done on Wikipedia. Some projects are in much worse shape, but improving slowly but surely. The WPTC has a leg up on other projects because we have such a passionate group of editors and writers. It's better for the long run to take a break, focus on RL, get some sun, have a laugh, and do whatever you can to stay sane these days.

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 157 featured articles and 70 featured lists. There are 135 A-class articles, and 1,002 good articles. There are only 65 B-class articles, perhaps because because most articles of that quality already passed a GA review. There are 369 C-class articles, 736 start-class articles, and 151 stub-class articles, with 31 lists, and 8 current articles. These figures mean that slightly more than half of the project is rated a GA or better. Typhoon Warren was the 1000th GA in the project.

About the assessment scale →

Storm of the month and other tropical activity for June


Tropical Storm Cristobal formed on June 1 in the Bay of Campeche from the remnants of Amanda in the eastern Pacific. Cristobal looped over the Yucatán peninsula before progressing northward, striking Louisiana on June 7, marking the second-earliest landfall on record in the state. The system moved through the central United States, eventually becoming extratropical over Wisconsin. Cristobal killed four people and left US$343 million in damage.

  • Atlantic - in addition to Cristobal, Tropical Storm Dolly formed in late June off the east coast of the United States. Originating as a subtropical depression, Dolly transitioned into a tropical cyclone over the Gulf Stream, and became extratropical on June 24.
  • Eastern Pacific - there were two short-lived tropical cyclones in the basin in late June. Tropical Storm Boris formed on June 24 and was a minimal tropical storm, and Tropical Depression Four-E formed at the end of the month off of Baja California.
  • Western Pacific - one tropical storm - Nuri - formed in the South China Sea, and killed one person when it struck southern China.
  • North Indian Ocean - Cyclone Nisarga formed on June 1 off India's western coast. The storm intensified into a severe cyclonic storm before it made landfall south of Mumbai. The cyclone killed 6 people and caused US$665 million in damage.