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 July 1–August 31, 2020. This edition's editors and authors are (alphabetically) Chicdat, Destroyeraa, Hurricanehink, Jason Rees, KN2731, Typhoon2013, & Weatherman27.

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 Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

• As we rapidly approach the 15th anniversary of the project in October, it has been proposed that the Climate, Tropical cyclone, Severe Weather, and Non-tropical storms (defunct) wikiprojects get merged into a single project: Wikipedia:WikiProject Weather. This brand new project would remove the overlap that exists between the projects. It provide us with a better opportunity to develop articles such as List of named storms A, B, C etc; Tornadoes in Fiji/New Zealand/Hawaii/etc; Floods in 2018, 2019, 2020, etc; Floods in Bangladesh/United States/Egypt, etc; Weather of 1997, 1998, 2020, etc; Weather in Tokelau/South Africa/France, etc; Hurricanes in the United States, Hurricanes in Mexico, Typhoons in China, etc. The discussion continues on WP:Meteorology. Any feedback would be appreciated.
• There are now more than 1,000 distinct good articles in the project, as of June, when Tropical Storm Sanba (2018) passed its GAR. That doesn't include the articles rated A-class that also passed GA status. There are now 1,299 good or featured articles, which 47.1% of all articles in the project. 80 net more good articles are needed for half of the project to be good or featured.
• There are more than 500 articles in the Western Pacific, as of July, when Yellow Evan (talk · contribs) created Tropical Storm Ofelia (1993) and Tropical Storm Percy (1993). The WPAC is the second basin to reach that milestone, after the Atlantic, which crossed that threshold in 2008. In fact, the WPAC is growing at a rate of 33 articles per year (since 2017), while the Atlantic is only growing at a rate of 13.6 articles per year (also since 2017). At that rate, the WPAC would surpass the Atlantic in number of articles in 15 years, when both basins would have about 1,000 articles. The EPAC would only have about 450 articles by that point. At the current rate, the entire WPTC would have 4,632 articles. For reference, there are 2727 articles in the WPTC at the moment, 2,185 of which are a storm/season/timeline article.
• The intensity lists by basin are progressing. List of Category 1 Atlantic hurricanes is still under construction, and could use help adding storms from 1936 to 2014. The List of Eastern Pacific tropical storms could use help adding storms from 1949 to 1989. The List of typhoons is going to take some time, as the current plan is to list every recorded typhoon, and not separate it (like the other basins) by category. This is because JMA is the RSMC for the WPAC, and they don't publicly use super/violent typhoon. Most intensity lists are finished for the North Indian Ocean, excepting the proposed List of depressions and deep depressions within the North Indian Ocean. Australia is almost done, only needing List of Australian region tropical lows, and SPAC is done all the way down to List of South Pacific tropical disturbances and tropical depressions. SWIO has only lists for very intense and intense tropical cyclones, so it could use more help.
• There is a discussion to merge the nearly 600 disambiguation/set index article into naming lists by letter, such as List of named storms (I), instead of Tropical Storm Ingrid. This would make sure that the pages are centralized, which would make updating and navigation easier.

New articles since the last newsletter include:

• 1900s Australian region cyclone seasons
• 1910s Australian region cyclone seasons
• 1920s Australian region cyclone seasons
• 1930s Australian region cyclone seasons
• 1940s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons
• 1950s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons
• 1965 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• 1966 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• 1967 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• 1968 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• 1969 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• 1971 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• 1972 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• 1973 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• 1974 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• Cyclone Owen
• Hurricane Dolores (2015)
• List of South-West Indian Ocean cyclones before 1900
• Tropical cyclones in 2005
• Tropical cyclones in 2007
• Tropical cyclones in 2013
• Tropical Storm Lekima (2007)
• Typhoon Cora (1966)
• Typhoon Della (1968)
• Typhoon Kathleen (1947)
• Typhoon Kai-tak (2000)
• Typhoon Kit (1966)
• Typhoon Marie (1954)
• Typhoon Mindulle (2004)
• Typhoon Olga (1976)
• Typhoon Ruby (1964)
• Typhoon Wanda (1956)
• Typhoon Yancy (1990)

New GA's include:

• Tropical Storm Nanmadol (2017)

Featured Content

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

• Hurricane Willa
• Meteorological history of Hurricane Dorian

From the Main Page documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page from July 1–August 31, 2020 in chronological order.

Today's Featured Article/List

• August 21 - Tropical Storm Ileana (2018)

There is currently one featured article candidate:

• Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Tropical Storm Vicente (2018)/archive2

WikiProject To-Do

Member of the month (edition) – ChessEric

ChessEric first joined Wikipedia in April of this year, and has quickly become a prolific weather editor. In addition to his work on tornado and severe weather articles, ChessEric helped write the bulk of the Hurricane Laura article (the storm of the month), in addition to making sure the article stayed free of vandalism, with 224 edits to the article as of this newsletter. ChessEric was one of 190 editors who worked on the Laura article. We thank ChessEric for his edits, and hope we can build on more collaborations in the future between the severe and the tropical cyclone Wikiprojects.

New WikiProject Members since the last newsletter

• SMB99thx (talk · contribs)
• Buttons0603 (talk · contribs)
• Robloxsupersuperhappyface (talk · contribs)
• ChessEric (talk · contribs)
• Allen2 (talk · contribs)
• Mazum24 (talk · contribs)
• Modokai (talk · contribs)
• CodingCyclone (talk · contribs)
• Gumballs678 (talk · contribs)
• Janm 7 (talk · contribs)
• I like hurricanes (talk · contribs)

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!

WPTC and WP:ITN, by Destroyeraa

A few weeks ago, I created an article, Hurricane Isaias, as it threatened much of the East Coast. I've created several articles already, but Isaias is one that stood out to me. First of all, it affected me, my town and my state of New Jersey, along with millions of other people. Two months ago, I learned about Wikipedia's In The News section of the main page, which documents recent events that are in the news. I nominated Isaias' article on August 1 here, and the discussion was closed quickly after Isaias had weakened significantly after impacting the Bahamas. As Isaias made landfall in the Carolinas, spawned 36+ tornadoes and killed 18 people, I re-nominated Isaias [1], got rejected again, and I learned a few lessons that I want to share to other editors:

When posting

• If you post something that isn't in the news or isn't notable at all, then it would be quickly closed without much discussion.
• Don't feel upset when someone opposes your nomination. It is almost guaranteed that someone will oppose your nomination.
• Keep improving the article. An article that is a stub won't likely be posted.
• When posting about a person, make sure the article complies with BLP policies, and is adequately referenced and well-written.

I also learned a few lessons about which tropical cyclones to post. In July, someone nominated Hurricane Hanna (2020) here, and it was also rejected because it didn't meet the notability requirements. Also, keep in mind that damage estimates and death reports often come out several days after the storm, which makes passing the nomination for a storm like Isaias, a storm that caused $4.2 billion and 18 deaths, somewhat hard.

My opinions on when to nominate an article (this list mainly refers to tropical cyclone articles)

• The storm should affect more than two countries. However, if the storm causes a lot of death and destruction in one country (such as Tropical Storm Imelda), see the requirements below
• The storm should cause more than $1 billion in damage. However, if the storm causes less destruction and less death, see the requirements below
• The storm should cause at least 10 or 20 deaths. Most ITN nominations about a disaster that have less than 10 deaths are usually rejected/closed.
• The storm should break at least 1 notable record (such as the deadliest storm to hit a country in 20 years, or something like that).

There is currently a discussion on the WPTC project page about this topic.

New user perspective on WPTC, By Weatherman27

Around six months ago, I joined Wikipedia after seeing many articles on tropical cyclones and their seasons. Being someone who has studied (and been through) multiple storms, I realized I could help make a difference, bring more attention to tropical cyclones and that Wikipedia was the perfect place to do that. Soon after, I came across the WikiProject Tropical cyclones page, and after seeing what they did, I decided to sign my name and join the project. I really enjoyed how they gave to-do lists of tropical cyclone pages that needed work among other things. One of the great things about this WikiProject is the warm welcome I received when I joined and I got to know some of the more veteran editors, and they really helped me get around on Wikipedia, such as helpful tips and great advice to make better edits. As I have become comfortable editing and helping other users, some things came to mind that I thought other new users should know when they join the WPTC:

• If you are new and have questions, don't be afraid to ask someone. There are plenty of helpful editors who know what they are doing, and who would be happy to give some great tips to get you used to editing weather articles on Wikipedia.
• Don't be afraid to start editing. You can edit tropical cyclone pages as much as you want, just make sure you use the proper sources and citations.
• Be kind. It is simply the Golden Rule, if you use it, others will too.
• If you see something wrong, do something! If you see vandalism or any strange edits, make sure you revert them.
• Help improve. There are plenty of tropical cyclone articles that need improvement and we need all the help we can get.
• If you have any ideas but you're not sure if they would be right for an article, you can discuss them with fellow users on a talk page.

I am sure I missed some tips, but these are important for getting started with WPTC. This WikiProject has some amazing people and articles and I am sure new users (and veteran users as well) enjoy this as much as I do and will continue to make great edits as well as informative articles.

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 August

Hurricane Laura tied the 1856 Last Island hurricane as the strongest hurricane ever recorded to make landfall in the U.S state of Louisiana, as measured by maximum sustained winds. It moved across the Lesser and Greater Antilles as a tropical storm, killing 35 people on the island of Hispaniola due to flooding and landslides. Laura rapidly intensified once it reached the Gulf of Mexico, becoming a powerful Category 4 hurricane on August 26 with peak winds of 150 mph (240 km/h) early the next day. On August 27, Laura made landfall near Cameron, Louisiana at peak intensity, producing wind gusts of 137 mph (220 km/h) in Lake Charles, and leaving at least $8 billion in damage. Overall, Laura killed more than 57 people, with more missing.

• Atlantic - the basin continued its record pace of activity. In the middle of the month, Tropical Storm Josephine formed east of the Lesser Antilles and eventually dissipated north of the islands. Tropical Storm Kyle originated off the east coast of the United States and moved to the east-northeast. Hurricane Marco formed in the Caribbean and briefly strengthened into a minimal hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. For a few days, the NHC forecast back-to-back hurricane landfalls from Marco and Laura within two days of each other; however, Marco dissipated near the Louisiana coastline without causing significant damage. Toward the end of the month, Tropical Depression Fifteen formed off the southeastern United States.
• Eastern Pacific - Hurricane Elida was the season's second hurricane, which brushed the Baja California Peninsula while moving northwestward. In the middle of the month, a series of storms formed, including a long-lived tropical depression, Tropical Storm Fausto, and Hurricane Genevieve, the last of which passed near the Baja California Peninsula. Genevieve killed two people, and its moisture spread into the southwestern United States. Toward the end of the month, Tropical Storm Hernan caused flooding and landslides in southwestern Mexico, and Iselle formed around the same time farther west over open water.
• Western Pacific - after a quiet July, the basin became more active in August. Tropical Storm Jangmi brushed western Japan and South Korea with heavy rainfall. A short-lived tropical depression existed south of Japan. Severe Tropical Storm Mekkhala formed in the South China Sea and struck Guangdong, resulting in heavy rainfall and $154 million in damage. About a week later, Severe Tropical Storm Higos struck the same region, leaving eight deaths. Typhoon Bavi formed east of Taiwan and moved northward through the Yellow Sea, eventually striking North Korea, where it caused one fatality. Toward the end of the month, Typhoon Maysak formed east of Taiwan and followed a similar path to Bavi, becoming a powerful typhoon as it moved through the Ryukyu Islands. Another tropical depression formed between the Marianas Islands and Japan on August 31.

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.

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 September 1–October 5, 2020, which is the 15th anniversary of the WPTC. This edition's editors and authors are ChessEric, Chicdat, Destroyeraa, Hurricanehink, and our member of the month, SMB99thx!

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 Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

• As we rapidly approach the 15th anniversary of the project in October, it has been proposed that the Climate, Tropical cyclone, Severe Weather, and Non-tropical storms (defunct) wikiprojects get merged into a single project: Wikipedia:WikiProject Weather. This brand new project would remove the overlap that exists between the projects. It provide us with a better opportunity to develop articles such as List of named storms A, B, C etc; Tornadoes in Fiji/New Zealand/Hawaii/etc; Floods in 2018, 2019, 2020, etc; Floods in Bangladesh/United States/Egypt, etc; Weather of 1997, 1998, 2020, etc; Weather in Tokelau/South Africa/France, etc; Hurricanes in the United States, Hurricanes in Mexico, Typhoons in China, etc. The discussion continues on WP:Meteorology. Any feedback would be appreciated.
• A series of goals, proposed for the project, has been extended to January 2021 for Wikipedia's 20th anniversary. Goals include tropical cyclone effects for every location around the world, merging the hundreds of disambiguation articles into lists by letter, and featured topics for every list of retired names. Some of these goals might take another 20 years to complete, but some are doable with some sustained effort.
• Hurricane Noah 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.

New articles since the last newsletter include:

• 1850s Pacific typhoon seasons
• 1860s Pacific typhoon seasons
• 1870s Pacific typhoon seasons
• 1880s Pacific typhoon seasons
• 1890s Pacific typhoon seasons
• 1941 Pacific typhoon season
• 1942 Pacific typhoon season
• 1943 Pacific typhoon season
• 1944 Pacific typhoon season
• 1950s South-West Indian Ocean cyclone seasons
• Cyclone Zorbas
• Hurricanes in Costa Rica
• Hurricanes in the Bahama Archipelago
• List of named storms (A)
• List of named storms (L)
• List of named storms (T)
• List of Cayman Islands hurricanes
• List of Hispaniola hurricanes
• List of Jamaica hurricanes
• Tropical cyclones in 2006
• Tropical cyclones in 2009
• Tropical cyclones in 2011
• Tropical cyclones in Southern Africa
• Tropical Storm Harriet (1962)
• Tropical Storm Sam (1999)
• Tropical Storm Utor (2001)
• Typhoon Alice (1958)
• Typhoon Chebi (2001)
• Typhoon Damrey (2005)
• Typhoon Iris (1959)
• Typhoon Kaemi (2006)
• Typhoon Koppu (2009)
• Typhoon Krosa (2007)
• Typhoon Lingling (2001)
• Typhoon Louise (1955)
• Typhoon Lupit (2009)
• Typhoon Ma-on (2004)
• Typhoon Marie (1954)
• Typhoon Marge (1951)
• Typhoon Meari (2004)
• Typhoon Olga (1999)
• Typhoon Ruth (1951)
• Typhoon Songda (2011)
• Typhoon Tess (1953)
• Typhoon Vanessa (1984)
• Typhoon Vicki (1998)
• Typhoon Xangsane (2000)

New GA's include:

• 2018 Pacific hurricane season
• Hurricane Dolores (2015)
• Typhoon Percy (1990)
• Tropical Storm Ampil

WikiProject To-Do

Member of the month (edition) – SMB99thx

SMB99thx first joined Wikipedia in 2013, but didn't officially join the WPTC until August 2020. Since then, they have been a prolific contributor, helping with less visible pages such as project talk pages, or splitting older season articles in the North Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. They are a such a tireless contributor and kind user, who appreciates others' contributions while being humble about their own. It was SMB99thx who gave barnstars along with kind and encouraging messages to countless other WPTC contributors and Wikipedians. SMB99thx also worked on several lists, including area affects lists, various drafts, and List of named storms (T). We'll take that T and say TY to SMB99thx for all of their contributions, and wish them luck at college.

New WikiProject Members since the last newsletter

• Hurricanehuron33 (talk · contribs)
• Hurricane21 (talk · contribs)
• TornadoLGS (talk · contribs)
• Iseriously (talk · contribs)
• Jupiter50 (talk · contribs)

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 September 1 to October 5, one featured article was promoted:

• Tropical Storm Vicente (2018)

From the Main Page documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page from September 1–October 5, 2020 in chronological order.

Today's Featured Article/List

• September 10 - Hurricane Gordon (2006)

There is currently one featured article candidate:

• Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hurricane Hector (2018)/archive1

How WikiProject Tropical cyclones should move forward by SMB99thx

As we have seen in the month of August and September, there is a surge of new articles. Most of these new articles are season/decade articles and Pacific typhoon articles, and most of these articles are assessed by me as either Start-class or Stub-class. These articles I believe would have been rejected by WikiProject Tropical cyclones in the earlier years (especially 2008-2012) - and these reflected the changes in WikiProject Tropical cyclones after I joined in July 2020.

In order to counteract that surge of Start-class and Stub-class articles in recent months, I have been closely working on the Article requests page (used to be a primary contributor of the surge that happened in August and September), trying to make this recently-extended WikiProject 15th anniversary as some serious effort as well as revamping WikiProject To-Do (and completing some, but not all tasks) - and the results of my work on these three projects led into the explosive growth of the WikiProject Tropical cyclones draftspace (I tried to prevent this by publishing the half-finished drafts into mainspace (which is primarily composed of C-class with some speck of Start-class articles coming out of it, and these are the ones that aren't as obviously unfinished like Draft:Effects of Hurricane Dorian on the Mainland United States), and made several drafts on articles that are not considered notable like Draft:Hurricane Barbara (2019) into redirects or deleted, but there is less kinds of these drafts now) as well as discovery of several drafts that isn't done by this point or are not listed as part of WikiProject Tropical cyclones. These drafts are later linked to the Article requests page. I don't my work is done yet, and in order to consider that effectively done, I need to get these drafts done and submitted as C-class or higher.

However, there is a personal problem I had to face in order to getting this work done when I'm still new to WikiProject Tropical cyclones. Article creation from drafts are not my strength. I create articles mostly from splits, not from drafts. As such, I consider article creation from drafts to be personally tedious work. As our 15th anniversary gets near, it appears that things are changing. As the draft space exploded, it appears fellow WikiProject Tropical cyclones are helping me out in getting these drafts complete, especially Destroyeraa (helping me out in deciding which drafts can pass the cut), ChessEric (working on Draft:Tropical Storm Noul (2020)), Robloxsupersuperhappyface (for developing current events articles, alongside ChessEric), I like hurricanes (Tropical cyclone lists), Chicdat (for the work on Tropical cyclones in 2002 and will probably work on others), Janm 7 (for working on Tropical cyclones in 2011 and 2003), and Iseriously (for useful season summaries, and this isn't a WPTC member!). I also began to frequently give out barnstars to these hard-working people like Jason Rees and Hurricanehink.

These events led me to believe that, if this WikiProject has to move forward then in my opinion this WikiProject should:

• Take things in Article requests, WikiProject To-Do, WikiProject Tropical cyclones draftspace and WPTC 15th anniversary push (now extended into January 15th, 2021) seriously. I have seen some serious neglect from this area of the WikiProject and i believe this really held back the growth of this WikiProject. In my opinion, this WikiProject could have been easily have 2500 articles, or even 3000 articles by now if that area of WikiProject had been taken seriously. Even possibly, this WikiProject could have a lot more quality articles than it is today!
• Frequently collaborate with each other. Don't bite the newcomers, but help them! They will help you.
• If someone wants to take a break, e.g. Yellow Evan, let them be. Don't hurt their feelings! (i.e. moving their userspace drafts into mainspace) If you are hurting their feelings, then this could discourage future collaborations that could advance this WikiProject.

Thanks for reading this opinion piece! And happy 15th anniversary, WikiProject Tropical cyclones!

OPINION PIECE - by ChessEric

Accuracy has always been one of my biggest sticking points when it comes to editing on Wikipedia. When I came here back in April, my first edit was a revert of misinformation on the 2020 Easter tornado outbreak article. Of course, I understand that as a relatively new user, I still have a lot to learn and I don't profess to know everything, even after I started several large projects that I will probably be working on for quite some time. My first tornado outbreak pages used only the Tornado History Projects which, while generally good for tornado tracks, provides no damage info and if weren't for editors like CapeVerdeWave and Halls4521, my "breakthrough" articles would be so incomplete. However, I've been able to research more and more and find ways to complete these articles and that has carried over into the tropical cyclone projects as well. My thing has always been is that If I can't find a source for it, then it's not true. I will continue to follow that motto and hope that others will do the same.

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 →

Comparison of 2005 and 2020

WikiProject Tropical cyclones was founded on October 5, 2005. By that time, Wikipedia had its small share of articles, including the four deadly hurricanes that hit the United States in 2004. The hyperactive 2005 Atlantic hurricane season featured a series of deadly and historic hurricanes, the first of which was Hurricane Dennis. This is how the article looked on 10/5/05. It might not look like much, considering how much larger storm articles tend to be today. However, Dennis quickly became a featured article by February 2006. Its quality showed a marked improvement from the 2004 hurricanes. For comparison, here is what Hurricane Charley looked like on 10/5/05, with barely any references, no preparations, no aftermath, and one sentence worth of impact for a location with $1 billion in damage.

The busy 2005 season featured Hurricane Katrina, and in the aftermath of the storm, dozens of articles related to the hurricane were created. Some still exist, such as Katrina refrigerator, Memorial Medical Center and Hurricane Katrina, and Effect of Hurricane Katrina on the Louisiana Superdome. I don't know if those hyper-specific articles would be created today, and many of these old articles are still of low quality. On the other hand, one of the most notable changes since 2005 is the improvement in articles throughout Wikipedia, both new and old. Every Atlantic season from 1945 to 2019 is a good article, and all but 31 seasons since 1851 are a good article. More impressive is how much other basins around the world have improved. As of June 2006 (the oldest date for our assessment tables), the EPAC only had articles back to 1970, WPAC with yearly articles back to 1945 (with a rump article for everything beforehand - there are now decade articles going back to 1850), and the NIO only had one yearly season article (with five-yearly articles going back to 1980, and one rump article for everything beforehand), with only six storm articles. There are now yearly NIO articles going back to 1960. Also as of June 2006, all SHEM storms were put into yearly articles going back to 1995, with three five-yearly articles going back to 1980, and then one article for everything beforehand. The SHEM is now split into its three sub-basins (plus a distinct article for SATL storms), with yearly articles back to 1970. There are also now yearly articles for tropical cyclones back to 2009.

15 years might not feel like much, or for some of you it's an entire lifetime. Users should be reminded of eventualism, in work will improve over time, especially with sustained editor attention. There are now over 2,000 articles in the project, versus less than 500 15 years ago, or 1000 10 years ago, or 1500 13 years ago. The project's growth hasn't always been even, but it has trended toward inclusion, with hundreds of articles that are the best resources available anywhere on a given storm/season/topic. As Mother Nature throws us hyperactive seasons, it will be difficult, but not impossible, to keep up with the annual cycle of tropical cyclone activity, so the world can remain informed of these swirling furies.

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.

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 October 5–November 30, 2020. This edition's editors and authors are SMB99thx, Weatherman27, Chicdat, Hurricanehink, Cyclone Toby, Typhoon2013, and ChessEric. 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 Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

New articles since the last newsletter include:

• 1900s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons
• 1910s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons
• 1920s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons
• 1925 Pacific hurricane season
• 1926 Pacific hurricane season
• 1927 Pacific hurricane season
• 1928 Pacific hurricane season
• 1929 Pacific hurricane season
• 1930 Pacific hurricane season
• 1930s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons
• 1931 Pacific hurricane season
• 1932 Pacific hurricane season
• 1933 Pacific hurricane season
• 1934 Pacific hurricane season
• 1935 Pacific hurricane season
• 1936 Pacific hurricane season
• 1936 Mid-Atlantic hurricane
• 1937 Pacific hurricane season
• 1938 Pacific hurricane season
• 1940 Pacific hurricane season
• 1941 Pacific hurricane season
• 1971 Odisha cyclone (reintroduced, this article survived the merge on the assessment table for years.)
• Cyclone Ava
• Cyclone Aivu
• Cyclone Titli
• Effects of the 1919 Florida Keys hurricane in Texas
• Effects of Hurricane Dorian in the Carolinas
• Hurricane Chris (2018)
• Hurricanes in Nicaragua
• List of named storms (B)
• List of named storms (J)
• List of named storms (K)
• List of named storms (S)
• List of named storms (Q)
• List of named storms (U)
• List of named storms (V)
• List of named storms (W)
• List of named storms (X)
• List of named storms (Y)
• List of South-West Indian Ocean tropical cyclones
• List of super typhoons
• List of very strong typhoons
• List of violent typhoons
• List of Western Pacific severe tropical storms
• November 1964 Vietnam floods
• Tropical cyclones in 2003
• Tropical cyclones in 2008
• Tropical Storm Brendan (1991)
• Tropical Storm Nakri (2014)
• Tropical Storm Usagi (2018)
• Typhoon Alice (1953)
• Typhoon Amy (1962)
• Typhoon Dot (1964)
• Typhoon Georgia (1959)
• Typhoon Ida (1945)
• Typhoon Joan (1959)
• Typhoon Khanun (2005)
• Typhoon Lingling (2019)
• Typhoon Marge (1973)
• Typhoon Opal (1962)
• Typhoon Sally (1964)
• Typhoon Soulik (2018)
• Typhoon Violet (1961)
• Typhoon Winnie (1964)

New GA's include:

• Hurricane Barry (2019)
• Tropical Storm Arthur (2020)
• Tropical Storm Bertha (2020)
• Tropical Storm Ewiniar (2018)
• Typhoon Jebi (2018)

Featured Content

From October 5 to November 30, two featured articles were promoted:

• Hurricane Hector (2018)
• Hurricane Walaka

From the Main Page documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page from October 5–November 30, 2020 in chronological order.

Today's Featured Article/List

• October 12 - Hurricane Gonzalo
• November 1 - Typhoon Gay (1989)
• November 28 - Hurricane Lane (2018)

There is currently one featured article candidate:

• Meteorological history of Hurricane Michael

WikiProject To-Do

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 164 featured articles and 70 featured lists. There are 133 A-class articles, and 1,010 good articles. There are only 71 B-class articles, perhaps because because most articles of that quality already passed a GA review. There are 415 C-class articles, 788 start-class articles, and 182 stub-class articles, with 23 lists, and 9 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 →

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.

Member of the month (edition) – Robloxsupersuperhappyface

Robloxsupersuperhappyface joined Wikipedia in July of this year, and has become the most prolific tropical cyclone editor relating to current events, as well as playing an enormous role in creation of newly formed tropical cyclones that eventually became destructive in many regions they are affected in (Hurricane Sally to Gulf Coast of the United States, Typhoon Goni to the Philippines, and Hurricane Iota to Central America respectively - Also, both Goni and Iota are Storms of the Month!). Because of that reason, Robloxsupersuperhappyface's articles are the one of the most viewed tropical cyclone articles in this year - as well as helped us on inviting prospective tropical cyclone editors to this project as they edited Robloxsupersuperhappyface's articles, leading into why we have more than 100 members in this WikiProject leading to this issue. As the result of brilliant Robloxsupersuperhappyface's contributions, we want to give many, many thanks to Super for helping this WikiProject grow so much recently. Happy Thanksgiving!

New WikiProject Members since the last newsletter - project membership is over 100 now!

• Funnycomixking (talk · contribs)
• JackGordean (talk · contribs) (Added to WPTC because of expressing interest directly)
• ARegularWisconsinite (talk · contribs)
• CyclonicStormYutu (talk · contribs)
• ARay10 (talk · contribs)
• Gex4pls (talk · contribs)
• Nioni1234 (talk · contribs)
• HurricaneTracker495 (talk · contribs)
• Jangmi20 (talk · contribs) (Added to WPTC because of userbox)
• Dannisom (talk · contribs) (Added to WPTC because of expressing interest directly)
• Qwerty325 (talk · contribs)
• Skarmory (talk · contribs)
• Moline1 (talk · contribs)
• HurricaneIcy (talk · contribs)
• Beraniladri19 (talk · contribs)
• Cristianpogi678 (talk · contribs)
• Miguel 04012010 (talk · contribs)
• Cyclonetracker (talk · contribs)
• Dam222 (talk · contribs) (Added to WPTC because of userbox)
• Hi 022828 (talk · contribs)
• Elijahandskip (talk · contribs) (WikiProject Current Events Coordinator!)
• TovarishhUlyanov (talk · contribs)
• Animem 1 (talk · contribs)
• Shift674 (talk · contribs)
• HurricaneGeek (talk · contribs)
• ThePelicanThing (talk · contribs)
• FinnTheHurricaneFanatic (talk · contribs)
• 8medalkid (talk · contribs)
• Vida0007 (talk · contribs)
• TFESS (talk · contribs)
• KILLERXR (talk · contribs)

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!

Let's talk about that - An opinion piece by Weatherman27

Before I start, I would like to link everyone to a new essay regarding Force Thirteen. Here it is: WP:F13. I recommend users (old and new) to read this to understand why we don't use Force Thirteen as a source, and why it isn't a reliable source. If you want to see what good reliable sources are, read this: WP:WPTC/AS Now, I will get to the main point of this opinion piece.

Recently, I have gotten more involved in talk pages, and sharing my ideas and/or my opinions on different issues or ideas that have come up, primarily on 2020 Atlantic hurricane season's talk page. As I have discussed these thoughts and ideas with other editors, I have noticed and experienced some things such as being personally attacked, which has led me to want to reiterated some key points here. Despite the fact that they are mentioned commonly at the top of talk pages, I want to bring these up as it is important to have a good base where people can properly chat and discuss topics in peace.

1. Treat others with respect This one can't be stressed enough. Especially on talk pages, it is a place where you and your peers communicate issues, opinions, or ideas to each-other. This means discussing topics in a kind and adult manner. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing in what somebody may say, but that does not mean that you have the right to put them down for not having similar views. It is simply the Golden Rule.

2. Assume Good faith Along with my first point, I feel this one needs to be brought up. People have different opinions, and that is all right, but just because you may not agree with it or what they say, does not mean that it was not out of good faith. They were most likely voicing what they think on the subject, and that is alright. This also goes for edits. Unless it is pretty obvious that a user as vandalized something, it is always good to assume good faith, as other people might not know the rules as well as a more experienced editor.

3. Avoid Personal attacks This is a very important subject that needs to be remembered not just on talk pages, but on all other parts of Wikipedia as well. On talk pages, discussions can get pretty tense and heated, and I admit that I have gotten into a few of these arguments as well. Despite this, it is never okay to attack someone. As a user who has gotten personally attacked before, I can definitely say that it does not feel good, and usually the person who made the attacked will get warned or blocked, so please be kind and accept what other people have to say, because you will get nowhere by being rude.

4. Come to a consensus (preferably a clear one) On talk pages, whenever there is a discussion regarding something important like the merging of an article, people need to decide what the outcome of something important on a talk page. For example, if there is say, a merge discussion for an article on a tropical cyclone, many people will give their input. Usually, different people will have different views on whether to merge or keep the article. Sometimes, the editor will close the discussion early, but this is usually for unrelated reasons, though it sometimes may be because the editor had a change of mind. Now, if there is support for say a merge of the article, then that will be the consensus and the discussion will be closed and the article merged. This can also happen on the opposite side, if an article is to be kept, the discussion will be closed and article kept. Simply put, it is important to discuss and come to a clear decision if there is a consensus involved, to avoid difficulty with the article or page in the future.

These are just a few examples of things that editors of the WPTC need to remember when using talk page discussions. There are plenty of other things not mentioned here that are just as important when it comes to using talk pages. I made this simply to help remind editors the key points when using the discussions, and I hope these were helpful to new users as well as veterans. We need to really get better at staying calm and keeping civil. I have noticed lots of hostility and arguing lately, as well as edit warring and disputes. We need to work this out. We are supposed to work together as WPTC editors, so please fix it. It is sad seeing so many editors getting reported or having to get blocked from this. Once again, keep discussions civil and have a good day. Signing off,

🌀Weatherman27🏈

My experiences as a WikiProject Tropical cyclones member by SMB99thx

Hello again, people of the WikiProject Tropical cyclones! In here, I want to tell how my experiences with WikiProject Tropical Cyclones changed my views on WikiProjects, helped me out of trouble and to be able to regain the trust of many people in Wikipedia.

When I joined WikiProject Tropical cyclones, it was the second WikiProject I have ever joined. The first WikiProject I have ever joined is WikiProject COVID-19, and the reason why I joined that project is to gain trust of people when I contributed to COVID-19 articles and as well as my fight against an IP editor which turned out to be the LTA named Bedriczwaleta (and has been active much more longer than I thought, since February of last year (!!!!)). I have the same thought process (and combined with my plans of editing old season articles, which is not done yet) when I first joined this WikiProject, but joining the WikiProject Tropical cyclones turned out to be something different. It led me to know what are the purposes of WikiProjects are and in turn led me to join many other WikiProjects since.

As such, what made me change my views on WikiProjects during my time as a WikiProject Tropical Cyclones?

First of all, I have seen that WikiProject Tropical cyclones members always actively work together to advance project goals, actively participating in discussions and give much-needed advice on new WikiProject Tropical cyclones members (including me). Second, WPTC really cares about our articles (and the assessments) as part of their project goals. 2018 FT project and Meteorological history of Hurricane Dorian (Four Award!) is a prime example of this. Third, we are actively welcoming the new members of this WikiProject and giving these members opportunity to succeed with us by i.e. giving out WikiLove (barnstars). Fourth, we, like WP COVID-19, actively fight against vandals and other LTAs e.g. Sidow........., UnderArmorKid, and Iphonehurricane95.

These kinds of activity led me to change my belief on what WikiProjects truly are. You could see this kind of activity on other good WikiProjects like WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors, which I just joined recently on 26 October 2020 as of this newsletter and WikiProject Articles of Creation, which I have interest on joining but I might not be able to.

Now, why WikiProject Tropical cyclones brought me out of trouble (and Chicdat, for that matter)?

WikiProject Tropical cyclones is generally a content-creating WikiProject. We really care about improving tropical cyclone coverage on Wikipedia. Members of this WikiProject generally encouraged to communicate and discuss (in Wikipedia, in Discord, or in IRC channel), and this is what helped me and Chicdat out from trouble since our discussions from what I have seen is not always administrative.

Before I joined WikiProject Tropical cyclones (and when I was still new to WikiProject Tropical cyclones), I have been putting myself on trouble numerous times. I was an ANI regular, and as an ANI regular I detailed about my struggle to deal with the LTA Bedriczwaleta and I'm was also putting up IBAN proposals of User:Jadebenn and User:Moamem as well as User:U1Quattro and User:1292simon. While I have managed to get my proposal succeeded and finally got Bedriczwaleta back on track for a while (what I thought), in August 20 (as I was about to finalize my decision to enter my college I'm currently in right now) I got myself into serious trouble against IP range 185.66.252.0/23 (which is apparently good at programming - I'm not). I tried to get them blocked for PA (calling me a thief who has a black soul), but this is where when I realized that I had to attribute things I copied within Wikipedia and I had to apologize to the user. Since then, I did my best to attribute everything I had copied articles from (Example) and I also realized that ANI is not for me (as I do not want to get into troubles by just being there), which led me to quitting ANI until November of this year when I decided to involve myself on Miggy72 dispute (now banned for sockpuppetry - Miggy72 could have been invited to WPTC if he stopped on insisting to create non-notable topics).

After that incident with the IP range 185.66.252.0/23, I have stated that I do not want to get myself into trouble as a presence in ANI. As such, I decided to focus on what I want to do, which is to continue my project of splitting season articles of the yesteryear and began to increasingly involve myself within the project - to look for help and giving the best help that I can do for this WikiProject. The activity from that September led me to become Member of the Month in the previous edition of this newsletter. It was a comeback that I needed, and I want to thank WikiProject Tropical cyclones (especially Hurricanehink) for getting me on this situation. Without their help, I'm not sure if I could be here on this day.

Now, for the final question – why this WikiProject helped me (and Chicdat) regain trust of many people in Wikipedia?

As I stated before, this WikiProject encourages discussion within other members of this WikiProject, which in turn encourages close involvement in all sides of this WikiProject. Because of this, some people are actually helping us learning policies in Wikipedia as the time goes on, rather than falling in into blocks. As such, with time, I have seen that some admins are open for Chicdat to become a rollbacker, while I got hold on several automated gadgets that was more useful. It appears that these tools are the reason why these people are one of the more trusted people in Wikipedia, which in turn helped me a lot at gaining trust. Someday in the future, I'm looking to become an admin by myself. But that's for the another day. For now, what I'm currently doing now is to work at my craft to eventually prepare for the day when I will seek for adminship in the years ahead.

In conclusion, you can see that this WikiProject helped me to regain my standing, alongside Chicdat, Nioni1234, Cristianpogi678, HurricaneTracker495 - and of course - CyclonicallyDeranged! If not for this WikiProject, I don't think they are will be here. Chicdat could have been CIR-blocked like Prahlad balaji and PythonSwarm, Nioni1234 and Cristianpogi678 ending up like Binbin0111 and Miggy72, HurricaneTracker495 would have a trouble establishing himself (or probably will never establish theirselves and stay as an IP) and CyclonicallyDeranged fully driven out from Wikipedia.

By the way, to me, both Binbin0111 and Miggy72 are young, but unfortunately they took on the wrong path (Binbin0111 was one of the earliest Force Thirteen insinuators - Binbin0111 is probably the impetus of Force Thirteen policy in this project (as it was made back in 2017), while Miggy72... we know what happened). I feel bad for them, especially Binbin0111. Had Binbin0111 is willing to learn and took steps forward to become productive young editor like Yellow Evan and two other resilient young editors I have mentioned did, Binbin0111 could have been one of the most valuable editors in this project, especially in matters related to Western Pacific basin, and in extension, Vietnam.

That's it. That's what I have to say. College is increasingly getting into my feelings right now, but I will do my best as I can coming into December. Sorry if I have a bad English. Thanks for reading this opinion piece!

Greetings from Indonesia,

SMB99thx my edits!

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 December 1, 2020–January 15, 2021. This edition's editors and authors are MarioJump83, Hurricanehink, Destroyeraa, Chicdat, Typhoon2013, CycloneFootball71, Hurricane Noah, LightandDark2000, Cyclone Toby (editor's pick for member of the month), Skarmory, Shift674, and HurricaneCovid. 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 Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

New articles since the last newsletter include:

• Cyclone Meena
• Hurricane Heather
• Hurricanes in Belize
• Hurricanes in Central America
• Hurricanes in Honduras
• List of depressions and deep depressions in the North Indian Ocean
• List of Georgia hurricanes
• List of named storms (C)
• List of named storms (D)
• List of named storms (P)
• List of named storms (R)
• List of strong typhoons
• List of typhoons
• List of Western Pacific tropical storms
• Tropical cyclones in 1977
• Tropical cyclones in 2002
• Tropical Storm Hernan (2020)
• Tropical Storm Karen (2019)
• Tropical Storm Merbok (2017)
• Tropical Storm Wipha (2019)
• Tropical Storm Yagi (2018)
• Typhoon Cimaron (2018)
• Typhoon Louise–Marge

New GA's include:

• Cyclone Ava
• Hurricane Beryl (last GA of 2020)
• Hurricane Chris (2018)
• Tropical Storm Karen (2019)
• Typhoon Alice (1953) (first GA of 2021!)
• Typhoon Louise–Marge

Typhoon Ike was also promoted from GA to A-class article.

Member of the month (Editor's Pick) – Cyclone Toby

Cyclone Toby first joined Wikipedia in July 2020 as I like hurricanes. Since then, they have become one of the most active editors, taking the initiative of fulfilling article requests, as well as helping us work on finishing many drafts we have. These articles include Hurricanes in Hispaniola, Hurricanes in Nicaragua, and Hurricanes in Honduras, as well as helping out getting Effects of Hurricane Dorian in the Carolinas (a long-standing draft that took many efforts to get it published to mainspace) nominated for GA, as of this writing. There are more articles Cyclone Toby is currently working on other than the ones previously listed. Also, Cyclone Toby is one of the kinder members of WPTC, actively welcoming many new editors that edited articles under WikiProject Tropical cyclones banner, as well as inviting some of these editors to the project, in which their influence ended up bringing more editors to WPTC without any invitation. We thank Cyclone Toby for work they have done in the past year, which was a horrible year for many of us, but Toby is one of many bright spots that helped us get through that year. As we enter the new year, we encourage Cyclone Toby to keep up their work and eventually complete these drafts, which will ultimately lead to the clearing of the backlog of drafts within the project.

Featured Content

From December 1, 2020 to January 15, 2021, there were no articles promoted to Featured Article status.
From the Main Page: Documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page from December 1, 2020–January 15, 2021 in chronological order.

Today's Featured Article/List

• December 8, 2020 - Cyclone Chapala
• January 12, 2021 - Hurricane Alex (2016)

Did you know...?

• December 9, 2020 - Typhoon Alice (1953)
• December 13, 2020 - Cyclone Gati
• December 17, 2020 - Tropical Storm Merbok (2017)

There is currently one featured article candidate:

• Typhoon Jebi (2018)

2018 Featured Topic Update

Featured Articles promoted (May 22–December 31)

• Hurricane Lane (2018)
• Hurricane Willa
• Tropical Storm Vicente (2018)
• Hurricane Hector (2018)
• Hurricane Walaka

Good Articles promoted (May 25–December 31)

• Tropical Storm Bolaven (2018)
• Tropical Storm Sanba (2018)
• 2018 Pacific hurricane season
• Tropical Storm Ampil
• Tropical Storm Ewiniar (2018)
• Hurricane Chris (2018)
• Cyclone Ava
• Hurricane Beryl

Current Candidates

• Typhoon Jebi (2018)

New Articles (Only C and below)

• Cyclone Owen
• Cyclone Titli
• Cyclone Zorbas
• Tropical Depression Josie
• Tropical Depression Usman
• Tropical Storm Toraji (2018)
• Tropical Storm Usagi (2018)
• Tropical Storm Yagi (2018)
• Typhoon Cimaron (2018)

Next Steps

For the next steps of the 2018 Global FT project, we're likely to finish the 2018 Pacific hurricane season FT by the end of the year. Hurricane Bud (2018) is likely to become a Featured Article (FA) around the first anniversary of the 2018 Global FT task force, which will be in June 2021, while Hurricane Olivia (2018) is the most likely FAC next in line. Sooner or later (which might happen before Bud or Olivia is FA), Timeline of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season will be completed, and subsequently nominated for Good Article (GA) status. After that, 2018 Pacific hurricane season might be nominated for Featured Topic (FT) before the timeline or the article is nominated for FA, based on the likely order of completion provided by Hurricane Noah on December 22, 2020 with some changes due to priorities after that time.

We also began to focus more attention on the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season FT, as evidenced by Hurricane Beryl and Hurricane Chris (2018) becoming GAs by the time of this issue of The Hurricane Herald, as well as the merger of Meteorological history of Hurricane Michael into Hurricane Michael (despite the merge moratorium which was enacted in November 23, 2020 - this was made possible by getting the consensus for an exception to the merge moratorium), which boosted the prospects of Hurricane Michael becoming a GA by the time of the next issue or the following one. Our next step in the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season FT, as it is currently planned right now, is to have Hurricane Leslie (2018) promoted to a GA.

In the Western Pacific, the creation of Effects of Typhoon Mangkhut in the Philippines is still being planned out, while Cimaron, Trami, Kong-rey, and Son-Tinh are in line to be nominated for GA later on - and Jebi may well become a FA by the next issue. In the North Indian Ocean, Cyclone Titli was recently created and likely to be expanded later on. In the Southern Hemisphere, Cyclone Owen is currently being worked on to become a GA someday, while Berguitta, Josie, Keni, and Liua are still under construction. For the Mediterranean, Cyclone Zorbas will be expanded upon and nominated for GA, some time after this issue.

We are recruiting

If you are interested in writing new articles, promoting articles to GA, or helping with the FAC review process for the Global 2018 FT project, please reach out to Hurricane Noah or any other member of the 2018 FT task force.

WikiProject To-Do

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 164 featured articles and 70 featured lists. There are 133 A-class articles, and 1,010 good articles. There are only 71 B-class articles, perhaps because because most articles of that quality already passed a GA review. There are 415 C-class articles, 788 start-class articles, and 182 stub-class articles, with 23 lists, and 9 current articles. These figures mean that slightly more than half of the project is rated a GA or better. Typhoon Warren was the 1,000th GA in the project.

About the assessment scale →

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.

Member of the month (edition) – Jason Rees

Jason first created an account on Wikipedia in August 2006, after tracking Hurricane Katrina and countless other storms in 2005. Since then, he has written four featured articles and 21 good articles. Recently, Jason has done great work expanding and cleaning up Cyclone Yasa, one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the South Pacific basin. He is also an active content creator, currently writing Cyclone Meena. Overall, Jason has done an outstanding job expanding the scope of tropical cyclone articles in the Southern Hemisphere basins, such as the South Pacific, where there is, sadly, a shortage of active users. We want to thank him for his wonderful work, and thus award him the Member of the Month award for this edition.

New WikiProject Members since the last newsletter

• Doge1941 (talk · contribs)
• Tropical Storm Angela (talk · contribs)
• HurricaneKappa (talk · contribs)
• KingLucarius (talk · contribs)
• Hurricanestudier123 (talk · contribs)
• 2 0 D a r t h S a n d M a n 0 5 (talk · contribs)
• iBlazeCat (talk · contribs)
• FuturPDUCTIONS (talk · contribs)
• SputtyTheSputnik (talk · contribs)
• AveryTheComrade (talk · contribs) (added because of userbox)
• Poxy4 (talk · contribs)
• SovietCyclone (talk · contribs)
• Gummycow (talk · contribs)
• Chong Yi Lam (talk · contribs)
• German2k2k (talk · contribs)
• Wikihelp7586 (talk · contribs)
• StopBoi (talk · contribs)
• Final-Fantasy-HH (talk · contribs)
• TheActiniumSpoon (talk · contribs)
• Ididntknowausername (talk · contribs)
• Dalandaniel (talk · contribs) (sock of Ajhenson21)
• BrownieKing (talk · contribs)
• Bunny04032010 (talk · contribs)
• Purplemountainman (talk · contribs) (first new member of WPTC in 2021!)
• 2003 LN6 (talk · contribs)

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!

A year in review: WPTC's accomplishments in 2020

2020 has been a hard year for many of us. Depending on where you live, the COVID-19 pandemic began as early as January. In most of the world, the pandemic ramped up in February and March, reaching its first peak in April–May. A second wave struck in June–August, which saw cases dramatically increase across the globe, while the third and largest wave began around October. However, during this pandemic, through lock-downs and online learning, as well as the the insanely active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, our WikiProject saw a huge influx of new editors showing interest in editing tropical cyclone articles. Here, we will take a look at the stats:

New WPTC members since January 1, 2020: AC5230, CycloneFootball71 (Previously Weatherman27), Chicdat, Hurricaneboy23, Chlod, Destroyeraa, NOOBSKINSPAMMER, HurricaneMichael2018, JoeMT615, MarioJump83, Buttons0603, Robloxsupersuperhappyface, ChessEric, Allen2, Mazum24, Modokai, CodingCyclone, Gumballs678, Janm 7, Cyclone Toby, Hurricanehuron33, Hurricane21, TornadoLGS, Iseriously, Jupiter50, ARegularWisconsinite, CyclonicStormYutu, ARay10, Gex4pls, Nioni1234, Dannisom, HurricaneCovid, Skarmory, Moline1, HurricaneIcy, Beraniladri19, HurricaneEdgar, Miguel 04012010, Cyclonetracker, Dam222, Hi 022828, Elijahandskip, TovarishhUlyanov, Animem 1, Shift674, Super Cyclonic Storm Corona, ThePelicanThing, FinnTheHurricaneFanatic, 8medalkid, Vida0007, TFESS, Doge1941, Tropical Storm Angela, HurricaneKappa, KingLucarius, Hurricanestudier123, 2 0 D a r t h S a n d M a n 0 5, iBlazeCat, FuturPDUCTIONS, SputtyTheSputnik, AveryTheComrade, Poxy4, SovietCyclone, Gummycow, Chong Yi Lam, German2k2k, Wikihelp7586, StopBoi, Final-Fantasy-HH, TheActiniumSpoon, Ididntknowausername, Dalandaniel, BrownieKing, Bunny04032010

New GAs since January 1, 2020: Hurricane Erin (1995), Typhoon Halola, 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, Tropical Storm Kirk (2018), Effects of Hurricane Wilma in Mexico, Hurricane Audrey, 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, 1916 Pensacola hurricane, Paleotempestology, 1934 Atlantic hurricane season, 1916 Virgin Islands hurricane, Cyclone Indlala, Typhoon Cecil (1985), Meteorological history of Hurricane Florence, 1929 Bahamas hurricane, 1938 Atlantic hurricane season, Tropical Storm Olga (2019), 1923 Atlantic hurricane season, 1893 San Roque hurricane, 2006–07 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season, Typhoon Zeke, Typhoon Amy (1991), Typhoon Yunya (1991), Effects of Hurricane Dorian in the Caribbean, Typhoon Sarika, Typhoon Warren, Typhoon Holly (1984), Typhoon Eli (1992), Typhoon Alex (1987), Typhoon Irving (1982), Tropical Storm Bolaven (2018), Tropical Storm Sanba (2018), Tropical Storm Nanmadol (2017), 2018 Pacific hurricane season, Hurricane Dolores (2015), Typhoon Percy (1990), Tropical Storm Ampil, Typhoon Jebi (2018), Tropical Storm Ewiniar (2018), Hurricane Barry (2019), Tropical Storm Bertha (2020), Tropical Storm Arthur (2020), Hurricane Chris (2018), Typhoon Louise–Marge, Cyclone Ava, Hurricane Beryl

New FAs since January 1, 2020: Tropical Storm Ileana (2018), Cyclone Chapala, Racer's hurricane, Hurricane Humberto (2019), Tropical Storm Zelda (1991), Hurricane Lane (2018), 1916 Texas hurricane, Hurricane Willa, Meteorological history of Hurricane Dorian, Tropical Storm Vicente (2018), Hurricane Hector (2018), Hurricane Walaka

Sockpuppetry in WPTC, by LightandDark2000

Due to recent incidents involving sockpuppetry within WPTC, I invited some editors to address the problem of socking inside the project. MarioJump83!

Sockpuppetry is a serious offense committed by various users on Wikipedia. Our own WPTC is not immune to this travesty. WPTC has seen its fair share of abuse from serial vandals and LTAs throughout the years. From 2013 through 2018, IPhonehurricane95 vandalized dozens of tropical cyclone articles and created more than 200 sock accounts. For several years, mostly spanning a two-year period from 2013 to 2014, IPhonehurricane95 defaced numerous tropical cyclone articles, mostly ones that he had once contributed to, were major storms, or were storms in an active tropical cyclone season. He also attacked essentially every single active editor on WPTC at the time, and he went on to attack every single Admin and CheckUser who had ever blocked him, in addition to making making racist remarks and threats of harassment. He eventually went cross-wiki, forcing the intervention of Stewards. In July 2014, he began including graphic 9/11 images in his vandalism, which further damaged the image of the project. IPhonehurricane95's vandalism inspired several copy-cat vandals, including one who has continued to plague the project to this day. This is a problem with LTAs and serial vandals – those who aren't stopped quickly enough and early on often bring bad publicity to the project, in addition to elevating the risk of copycat inspiring knock-offs. In 2016, IPhonehurricane95's socking spree dramatically decreased, with the LTA disappearing in 2018. Sockpuppetry on WPTC has not been nearly as bad since then, but sockpuppetry persisted on WPTC afterward, even to this day. Recent LTAs that WPTC had to deal with include Fly High in the Sky and Wyatt2049, and possibly Evlekis, with the later two engaging in a campaign of vandalism claiming fake Category 5 upgrades (or Category 0 downgrades) "from God" that attracted a lot of bad publicity. Recently, some users dabbled with socking, which got them into trouble. With the recent breaches of trust on WPTC and the confirmation of socking by CUs in several of the newer members, some members of WPTC have called for WPTC members to be vetted by CUs. In the past year alone, a few editors who had recently joined the project came out as sockmasters who went on to become LTAs, further adding to the pressure on WPTC. Personally, I feel that the newer users who joined within the past 6 months with a history of disruption should be examined by a CheckUser, but long-standing CU policy is to not investigate anyone unless there are serious allegations of sockpuppetry (with evidence). This policy exists for good reason, and these requests for blanket CUs may very well be turned down, if proposed.

Sockpuppetry is not only bad for the reputation and integrity of the project. It is also harmful to the well-being of editors on the site, especially when they become the targets of attacks. In addition, sockpuppetry breaks the trust of the community when the said offender is a trusted and valued member of the community, no matter the level and duration of the offense. Those editors have to work hard to regain the trust of the community, and in some cases, trust may never be restored. Perhaps equally as bad, sockpuppetry leads to false accusations of the practice and claims of intentional bad faith against both reformed ex-sockpuppeteers and non-socking editors alike. This further damages the reputation of the site, while unnecessarily inflaming tensions between editors on the project and damaging the cohesion between the community. These aspersions also hurt well-meaning editors on the site, and can have the unwanted consequences of embittering them or prompting them to go into retirement. While there are users on WPTC who are dedicated to rooting out and combatting vandals and sockpuppeteers on the site (including some who are a part of the Counter-Vandalism Unit), this is a responsibility that the entire project needs to bear as a whole, since socking is an issue that affects the entire project in one way or another. Editors should be willing and able to investigate potential cases of socking and other types of abusive behavior, while maintaining good faith at the same time. Sockpuppetry is serious issue and an ongoing challenge to the project. Equally as bad are unfounded allegations of the abuse against editors with a long-standing history of being a net-positive. However, together, as a community, we can combat this menace to safeguard the integrity and accuracy of WPTC articles, and make Wikipedia a healthy, productive environment. ~ LightandDark2000 🌀

The Renewal and Growth of WPTC, by LightandDark2000

WPTC had its humble beginnings in the early days of Wikipedia. The WikiProject was founded by Jdorje on October 5, 2005, during the heart of the record-breaking and devastating 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. The founding of WPTC provided a place for editors who had an interest in tropical cyclones to collaborate. Over the next few years, dozens of users flocked to WPTC, growing the ranks to over 60 active members by 2011. This was the first generation of WPTC editors, many of whom had been active on Wikipedia within a few years of its founding in 2001. The first WPTC editors worked hard on improving the quality and quantity of tropical cyclone articles, attaining 100 Good Articles (GAs) and several Featured Articles (FAs) by January 2007. The number of existing TC articles grew each month, with the project boasting 1,000 articles by January 2008. However, as the years passed by, long-time members of the WPTC gradually began dropping out. Reasons included entering college, a busy work schedule, loss of interest in the subject, and retirement from Wikipedia, among other reasons. By January 2011, more than 120 members had either become inactive or had left Wikipedia entirely. By the end of the year, WPTC membership had hemorrhaged to the point where roughly 19 users remained in the WikiProject. As of this writing, the first 13 members on the WPTC roster can be considered the remaining "core" of this first generation that has stayed with the project throughout the years. But the initial WPTC Golden Age was over. The flow of new recruits fell off sharply, and overall interest declined. WPTC would remain at this reduced level of membership and activity for years to come.

More users continued to join the WikiProject over the next several years, albeit on a significantly reduced scale. Even then, the vast majority of the work done on tropical cyclone articles were largely carried out by a "core" of roughly a dozen experienced editors who stayed on with the WikiProject throughout the year, even as tropical cyclone activity shifted between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. However, this reduction in the numbers of active users meant that many more articles ended up being neglected, or suffered from reduced quality. The flow of new GAs and FAs slowed down, and new FACs almost ground to a halt. Some long-time editors, such as Hurricanehink, continued to hammer out TC articles, while recruiting and mentoring new members. The second generation of WPTC editors began showing up in 2013 through 2016, including Nova Crystallis, Typhoon2013, Master of Time, KN2731, and me. (I had edited on Wikipedia for several years before then, but I wasn't officially a part of WPTC prior to 2014.) While new editors continued to join each year, others kept on leaving, and the size of the roster remained around the same size. On a Featured Article review, one of the reviewers even remarked that WPTC was no longer as lively as it once was, with much of the activity having died down. Working on WPTC grew depressing at times, with some of the active editors moving on to other topics when their basins of interest went inactive (usually when the northern hemisphere seasons came to an end). Articles suffered from quality control and content issues in numerous places, especially articles on storms outside of the North Atlantic and East/Central Pacific hurricane basins, where most of the activity from experienced editors was historically concentrated. Articles for storms in the Southern Hemisphere were the hardest-hit, with only a few editors, such as Jason Rees, continuing to work hard on them year-round. As usual, the vast majority of work fell on a tight-knit group of roughly two dozen editors, most of whom were senior editors who had been present since the early days of WPTC. At times, I wondered whether I would ever see the day in which we would have enough active editors on our roster to bring WPTC back to its former glory.

From 2016 to 2018, more users joined WPTC, including ChocolateTrain, Hurricane Noah, and MarioProtIV, some of whom would later play a key role in revitalizing tropical cyclone articles or WPTC on some level. In 2018, Hurricane Noah helped restructure some of the internal dynamics of WPTC, including the creation of specific task forces for certain topics and also designing a new award system, in order to help motivate WPTC members and also to help coordinate the work between other editors more effectively. That same year, he kicked off a massive campaign to get more articles to GA and FA status, By late 2020, more than two dozen articles had been brought up to GA or FA status, and WPTC saw its first potential Featured Topic Candidate in more than 6 years (the 2018 Pacific hurricane season). After 2019, the number of new members gradually increased, and activity picked up across the WikiProject. A third batch of new editors showed up between 2018 and 2019, tripling the WPTC roster to 60+ active members. These editors included FleurDeOdile, CycloneYoris, EBGamingWiki, Sandy14156, SaiTheCyclone, DavidTheMeteorologist, JavaHurricane, and others. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Despite the ensuing lockdowns and other fallouts from the pandemic, WPTC saw an explosion of new editors that same year. This 4th generation of editors was, by far, probably the largest influx of new membership that WPTC had ever seen. By the end of the year, the active membership roster had exploded from 69 to 124 active members. Our newer members from 2020 include AC5230, CycloneFootball71, Chicdat, Hurricaneboy23, Chlod, Destroyeraa, MarioJump83, ChessEric, Modokai, CodingCyclone, Cyclone Toby, TornadoLGS, HurricaneCovid, Skarmory, and many, many others. The wait was finally over. New life had been breathed back into WPTC. It was almost as if the good old days of the WikiProject were starting to return. While we've had our ups and downs this year, the influx of new editors infused WPTC with much-needed new blood and also helped relieve the senior editors of some of the burdens they've had to bear for years. Our hope is that the vast majority of these new editors will stay with us going forward, even as tropical cyclone activity cycles on and off across the world. Even after the pandemic-related lockdowns end.

In closing, I want to thank my fellow WPTC editors for my experience. When I first started as an IP editor on Wikipedia more than a decade ago, I never imagined that WikiProjects existed, not to mention one specifically tailored for tropical cyclones. I had a rough start here, with a bitey reception from most of the others who communicated with me, while also struggling to learn some of Wikipedia's fundamental policies (particularly citations). However, I eventually eased into the place and the others warmed to me, and my proficiency in editing improved as I spent more time on Wikipedia. The truth is, whenever I came under pressure in other areas of Wikipedia, whether it is from hounding, witch hunts, attacks, or other hostile behavior, I've always retreated back to WPTC. Why? Because I've always felt much more welcome here. And safe. In some ways, WPTC has become my home on Wikipedia. I've gotten so much more out of here than I had expected to as well. My time on Wikipedia helped sharpen my writing (and typing) skills, which was a rather nice bonus. I've also made a number of new friends here (some of whom I've grown rather close with), all of whom I enjoy working with. Thank you, all of you, for everything. Thank you for showing me what the Wikipedia experience should be like, and thank you for being willing to befriend me. I look forward to continue working with you all and growing with you in the years to come. May you all have a wonderful 2021! ~ LightandDark2000 🌀

My stress, by MarioJump83

Hello, this is my first opinion piece on Hurricane Herald as MarioJump83. In this opinion piece, I want to explain why I'm not as active as I'm hoping for in recent weeks. I do not plan to ever make this opinion piece at all, but I had to speak out about my issue with my activity in order to balance this edition of Hurricane Herald as well as to prevent attempts at adding my work-in-progress opinion piece to this issue because I'm planning to package that opinion piece with a long-finished but unfortunately delayed opinion piece. I want to apologize for delaying my work-in-progress opinion piece numerous times, given there are numerous issues about it, one of which (stress) will be addressed in this opinion piece.

Since last December, I have repeatedly have been on semi-wikibreaks. Wikipedia, as I know it, is a serious business. I was no longer the "nice guy" when I got my MoTM. Stress has been building up as I faced college exams as well as my father's stroke which happened on December 17, 2020. I attempted to break this semi-wikibreak once as I requested to change my name from SMB99thx into MarioJump83 for a breath of a fresh air (some days before that I requested deletion of my userpage for the same reason), and did some AfC reviewing spree in January 2 and 3. But as it turns out, it was quite a failure as three AfC submissions I accepted ended up being in jeopardy, with me trying to save the last one standing. I think these experiences ruined my chance to become a permanent new page reviewer, pushed me back into my semi-wikibreak once more and I had to enroll myself into New Page Patrol School in hopes of getting back into what I wanted. As such, I decided to commit into content creation as I was granted page mover rights (temporary) on January 4. As of now, I'm trying my best to come out on this second semi-wikibreak, bringing myself out of trouble that I didn't intend to participate in and planning to become autopatrolled some day as the college exams are winding over.

Wish me and my family for the best in the coming weeks, anyone! I'm hoping that it will happen after the release of this issue, if not later. By the way - even when I'm still stressed - I am going to wish everybody Happy New Year and Happy 20th Wikipedia anniversary! (Don't forget that we also reached edit number 1,000,000,000!)

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 member list. New members will automatically receive this newsletter. This issue of The Hurricane Herald covers all project related events from January 15–February 28, 2021. This edition's editors and authors are MarioJump83, Destroyeraa, HurricaneCovid, CycloneFootball71, HurricaneEdgar, Skarmory, Typhoon2013 (editor's pick for member of the month), and our member of the month, LightandDark2000! 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, including past MoTMs and SoTMs, can be viewed here.

WikiProject Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

• In response to the initial selection of Cyclone Toby as MoTM of the last edition, the long established-practice of picking MoTM (edition) by the main editor of Hurricane Herald was changed, with one that involved most of the WPTC community being created. The original practice continues to live on, but in the form of MoTM (Editor's Pick), as wished by longtime editor of the Hurricane Herald, Hurricanehink. The details of this event were recorded in the notes of the last edition and in this edition.
• On January 13, 2021, Destroyeraa announced the Cyclone Cup, which was inspired by the WikiCup. There are seven participants in the 2021 Cyclone Cup, who are: CodingCyclone, Skarmory, CycloneFootball71, MarioJump83, Jason Rees, HurricaneCovid, and LightandDark2000. This is the second-ever competition organized by members of WPTC. The first competition organized by WPTC members was the WPTC Bowl, which started on January 2012, before flaming out by the end of 2012 without anyone winning the competition. The WPTC Bowl was also inspired by the WikiCup, similar to the Cyclone Cup, but ran differently from the Cyclone Cup. We hope that the Cyclone Cup ends up successful, with a winner.
• In the light of BCNY2011's membership situation (now globally locked and was found to be socking also), I, MarioJump83, heavily revamped the members list of WPTC as well as formalized WPTC bylaws, with some modifications, regarding inactive membership, thus allowing veteran WPTC members Runningonbrains, Juliancolton (two of the 14 WPTC core members), Atomic7732 and Derpdadoodle to rejoin the project. I also tried to enforce some guidelines regarding recruiting and membership as it was discussed previously, but since I did not discuss and establish the consensus in regards to enforcement and the shape of "guidelines" as of now is more of an essay, for now they will be considered unofficial and have yet to be implemented. It will be discussed later on, probably in a survey.
• During Wikipedia's 15th anniversary, I officially revived the Non-tropical storms WikiProject (WPNTS), due to WPTC editors actively joining the WikiProject, despite the fact that the WikiProject was defunct. (More reasons will be stated in my opinion piece in the next issue of the WPNTS newsletter.) Despite its formal revival, WPNTS was not fully reorganized until February 7. That day, I closely modeled that WikiProject after WikiProject Tropical cyclones, thus tying WPNTS together with WPTC, as the two WikiProjects are closely intertwined. In the meanwhile, I discovered the defunct newsletter of WPNTS and later on, WikiProject Severe Weather, both of which has their last issues in March 2008. As I began WPNTS makeover, I revived both publications. The WikiProject Non-tropical storms Newsletter, which is known as The Frozen Times, and the WikiProject Severe weather Newsletter will become sister publications of The Hurricane Herald going forward. I have set their publication dates on March 15, and April 1, 2021, respectively, and they are going to become semi-regular newsletters. Before they ever get published, I implore you to help me writing these newsletters, the links for which are listed here: , .
• Alongside the revamp above, I discovered the 2011 list through looking at the edit history of the members page, which shows the true extent of this WikiProject's popularity, as well as the members that joined the project after 2011 but were eventually removed from the roster, as the after effects of Hurricanefan25's mass removal of inactive WikiProject members. I restored them back to the list during and after the revamp - they were truly part of the WikiProject during the golden age of WPTC and I see it's removal by the sock of Perseus, Son of Zeus, as effectively destroying the history of the WPTC because of the importance of these members. The restored list reveals that Knowledgekid87 is actually a member of WPTC back in the day and clearly still participates in the project, while Rosalina2427 is actually an another member of the 14 golden age WPTC remnants that still remain to this day. (Note: These were the members that was listed before TheAustinMan joined the project) Our newsletter's subscribers AySz88, RingTailedFox, WmE, Douglasr007, Dylan620 and X! were actually members of this WikiProject, despite the belief that they weren't. And the others, such as Good kitty and Miss Madeline were very influential in the building of this WikiProject. In conclusion, you can see that there is more from the WikiProject than meets the eye. The WikiProject used to be huge before 2010s decade started, and they were the building blocks of the project that unfortunately were erased by some sock.
• The three-month merge moratorium, which has been implemented since November 23, 2020, ended on February 23, at 03:45:00 UTC. During the moratorium, when it was in effect, there were generally no attempts to discuss changes to the moratorium, nor were there any requests for article mergers. However, there were two requests to allow an exception to the merge moratorium. One of which was to merge Meteorological history of Hurricane Michael to the Hurricane Michael as that article presents an obstacle for Hurricane Michael article to reach GA - the consensus for exception was quickly reached on Christmas 2020, and on January 5 the article was finally merged. The other, which was meant for Hurricane Jeanne's impacts articles, was never made into a proposal and thus were not seriously discussed at all. The first such merger after the merge moratorium expired was merging Tropical Storm Amanda (2020) and Tropical Storm Cristobal (2020) into Tropical Storm Amanda–Cristobal, which later was requested to be moved into 2020 Central America and Mexico floods and opposers of the merger requested splitting them back once again.

New articles since the last newsletter include:

• 1950 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• 1951 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• Cyclone Guambe
• Hurricane Olivia (1982)
• Ken Graham
• List of named storms (E)
• List of named storms (F)
• List of named storms (G)
• List of named storms (H)
• List of named storms (M)
• List of named storms (N)
• List of named storms (O)
• List of typhoons in the Philippines (1963–1999)
• List of typhoons in the Philippines (2000-present)
• List of Western Pacific tropical depressions
• Tropical cyclones in 1997
• Tropical cyclones in 1998
• Tropical cyclones in 1999
• Tropical cyclones in 2000
• Tropical cyclones in 2001
• Tropical Storm Barijat
• Tropical Storm Linfa
• Typhoon Prapiroon (2018)
• Typhoon Tapah (2019)
• Typhoons in the Korean peninsula

New GA's include:

• Typhoon Sally (1964)
• Tropical Storm Rolf

2018 Featured Topic Update

Featured Articles promoted (January 1–February 28)

• None during this issue.

Good Articles promoted (January 1–February 28)

• None during this issue.

Current Candidates

• None during this issue.

New Articles (Only C and below, January 1–February 28)

• Tropical Storm Barijat
• Typhoon Prapiroon (2018)

During this issue...

I, MarioJump83, the interim coordinator of 2018 Global FT's WPAC squad, feels bad with what is going on as I felt we are taking a step back with the ongoing real-life difficulties regarding important members of our task force. KN2731 had to take a wikibreak because of the compulsory service in Singapore and will likely be gone for two years; Destroyeraa's activities were highly inhibited by multiple illnesses, school exams, "bullying" issues, and series of winter storms this month; Hurricane Noah almost took a two-month-long wikibreak because due to college studies, which Noah is committed to (he also left the WPTC Discord for a couple of months, due to toxicity). I don't really like to take a lot of responsibilities within the 2018 Global FT task force, as I had joined with the intent of helping GA's that involves this year, i.e. like what I did in Cyclone Ava and Cyclone Owen as of now, but with so many of us were forced out of commission due to these problems I mentioned, I and LightandDark2000 had to take much of the responsibility within the task force. Because of this reason, I strongly recommend you, readers of Hurricane Herald, to join this task force to help take pressure off from us. Note that this is not a formal invite, as Wikipedia is free and anyone can edit, but this is what we have to deal with in this current situation, especially because of our real-life problems and commitments. Let's hope that we, including you, can make this through with what we can do!

We are recruiting

If you are interested in writing new articles, promoting articles to GA, or helping with the FAC review process for the Global 2018 FT project, please reach out to LightandDark2000 or any other member of the 2018 FT task force.

WikiProject To-Do

Member of the month (edition) – LightandDark2000

LightandDark2000 joined Wikipedia as an IP editor on May 2, 2009. Although a couple of users encouraged him to make an account early on, he decided to continue editing articles from his IPs for the next few years. He registered his user account in May 2012 and spent another year on Wikipedia as an IP editor, before fully transitioning over to his account in the summer of 2013. He received an invitation to join WPTC in March 2014, which he accepted. Ever since joining WPTC, LightandDark2000 has been a regular editor on tropical cyclone articles and one of Wikipedia's most active rollbackers, putting him on the forefront in the fight against vandals and LTAs, and actively steering the WikiProject out of stagnation. He also defended WPTC from numerous vandals, including the likes of the LTAs IPhonehurricane95 and Lightning Sabre. In late 2014–early 2017, LightandDark2000 largely moved out of WPTC into MILHIST (as well as taking a 3-month WikiBreak in the fall of 2016—due to college work and stress from on-wiki hounding), before returning to WPTC in September 2017, following the devastating landfall of Hurricane Harvey in Texas. From there, LightandDark2000 regularly contributed to tropical cyclone articles, as well as articles on other storms and natural disasters, before taking a series of WikiBreaks in late 2019 through mid-2020, due to college work and real-life activities.

However, LightandDark2000 returned in July 2020, just as the extremely-active North Atlantic hurricane season got underway. By the time the last issue of The Hurricane Herald was released, LightandDark2000 had made a full return and was ramping up activity, even as WPTC was beset by a series of problems within its membership, ranging from blocks to stress-induced WikiBreaks. During this time of crisis, LightandDark2000 stepped up very quickly - first, he helped out a number of users who were struggling with personal issues on the WikiProject. Then, he joined 2018 Global FT (currently the Interim Coordinator, with Hurricane Noah and KN2731 stepping aside due to real-life commitments). From there, he conducted his first GA review, which was for Hurricane Beryl. After that, he took on a major role in the writing of the previous issue of The Hurricane Herald, which as of this writing is the biggest issue of Hurricane Herald ever published, at an excess of 50,000 bytes, as well as being the most visually-balanced Hurricane Herald issue since the first issues of Hurricane Herald (if it were to be viewed using a 1920×1080 desktop using Legacy Vector). For these reasons and his contributions to the WPTC in the past, we will finally thank LightandDark2000 for all of his contributions by rewarding him with the Member of the Month for this edition. It's quite sad that he didn't get this award since the restart of Hurricane Herald in late 2018 to this day, but now, he has the opportunity to win the award for the first time. We are hoping to see more from LightandDark2000 in the future. For example, he joined the 2021 Cyclone Cup (and also volunteered to take on the role of a judge, if necessary), a new competition for WPTC members based on the WikiCup!

New WikiProject Members since the last newsletter

• DaniloEvan123 (talk · contribs)
• AwesomeHurricaneBoss (talk · contribs)
• HarrySupertyphoon (talk · contribs)
• Flasty Jam (talk · contribs) (Rejoined)
• Akbermamps (talk · contribs)
• VantaWiki (talk · contribs)
• Aegeou2 (talk · contribs)

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 January 15 to February 28 no featured article were promoted.

From the Main Page: Documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page from January 15–February 28, 2021 in chronological order.

Today's Featured Article/List

• February 18, 2021 - Meteorological history of Hurricane Dorian

Did you know...?

• January 18, 2021 - Hurricane Beryl
• February 9, 2021 - Cyclone Meena

There are currently no featured article candidates.

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 164 featured articles and 70 featured lists. There are 133 A-class articles, and 1,010 good articles. There are only 71 B-class articles, perhaps because because most articles of that quality already passed a GA review. There are 415 C-class articles, 788 start-class articles, and 182 stub-class articles, with 23 lists, and 9 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 →

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.

Special thanks to David Roth, Keith Edkins, Hylian Auree and HurricaneSpin

In this section, we want to thank these first-generation WPTC members for being able to stay in here for years before 2020. They (David, Keith, Hylian and Spin) are one of greatest content creators in WPTC history, helping to build and shape WPTC for what it is now today. Without them, we don't know if WPTC would be like today. David Roth's expertise, Keith Edkins' maintenance activities, Hylian's and Spin's content creation skill helped a lot in the early days of WPTC and we hope some of us can replicate what they can do in today's WPTC.

Member of the month (Editor's Pick) – Typhoon2013

Typhoon2013 first edited Wikipedia in August 2013, and ever since joining Wikipedia, Typhoon2013 has been one of the most prolific editors in Western Pacific basin. Since last November, Typhoon2013 has been working very hard on getting tropical cyclone intensity lists of Western Pacific basin done, lending a hand in creation of named storms lists of C, P, R, and S (alongside finishing List of named storms (T) which I was unable to complete because of college), as well as finishing storm lists of Pacific typhoon seasons from 1980 to 1964. For the efforts Typhoon2013 has done leading to the publishing of this newsletter, I, MarioJump83, as one of many editors of Hurricane Herald, will be picking Typhoon2013 as the Member of the Month (Editor's Pick) and thank him for his contributions to build a bedrock foundation for the rapidly-growing Western Pacific coverage of the Wikipedia. We wish Typhoon2013 best of luck at college!

My experience here on Wikipedia - by Destroyeraa

Was planned to be published in 44th edition of Hurricane Herald, however due to some issue (and per Destroyeraa's request), I have delayed this opinion piece further into this edition. At this point, I do not want to see this opinion piece getting delayed further into May 2021 as I really, really want this OP, alongside my OP below to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. MarioJump83!

I created my Wikipedia account on January 18, 2020. I seems so long ago. My first edit was creating my user page, and my first mainspace edit was on Hammonton, New Jersey. My first autoconformed edit was on my userpage. By then, I was editing about myself and roads. My first tropical cyclone edit was on January 30, on Tropical Storm Nestor, which got reverted. I also . I edited List of United States tornadoes in April 2020, but got bitten on the talk page, though my love for tornadoes kept me editing pages. I also began editing numerous cyclone pages, and joined WPTC on May 19. It was sad that no one noticed that I joined, and no one welcomed me on my talk page for five months already. I submitted my first article, Tropical Storm Bertha (2020), which was accepted. I was still rather new, and mistook Chicdat as an admin. It was June already. Still, no one welcomed me. Finally, on June 5, Hurricanehink took notice of my edits and welcome me! Around the same time, I downloaded Twinkle. I found the CSD function very cool, and I admittedly didn't read WP:CSD and misused it. One month later, I met my first real vandal, which turned out to be a Force Thirteen kid who was messing around changing everything to Force Thirteen without leaving a source or an edit summary, which most people will take as vandalism. It turned out to be pretty rough, and did not end well for both of us. I was still learning at that stage, as shown here. After that, my experience here got much better. Perhaps it was the "learning-the-ropes" phase that is the hardest for all Wikipedians. I created and wrote some good articles, with my first being Hurricane Dolores, promoted on September 24. I also developed a good relationship with many of my fellow Wikipedians, including the editors/writers of this newsletter and many other newer and older users. Then came the sock block. I'll not get into much detail about that, though I will be forever indebted to the countless users who vouched for me and who welcomed me back to the community with open arms. Thank you. I am glad to be here today.~ Destroyeraa🌀🇺🇸

My experiences of tropical cyclones and tropical cyclone editing before joining WPTC - by MarioJump83

I planned this OP way back to September 2020, but because of issues with length and college (also even stress - detailed in my previous opinion piece My stress), I decided to delay this opinion piece until now. I also intend to publish this opinion piece alongside Destroyeraa's OP above, thus pushing back the date where I can publish this opinion piece further. Thus I fully apologize for delaying this opinion piece for way too long. I was unable to spend my time on building this opinion piece because of these issues and thus getting this opinion piece complete in time. By the way, this will be the final opinion piece I will write for Hurricane Herald - I'm done with it after two opinion pieces as SMB99thx and two opinion pieces as MarioJump83. It was so much fun creating opinion pieces, but I don't want to have opinion pieces for four straight issues already since the 43rd edition! I'm still editing Hurricane Herald in the future, but not writing opinion pieces any further - ...unless you're inviting me to write an opinion piece in my user talk page, which I'll do my best to comply.

Hello, WikiProject Tropical cyclones! I want to tell you about the reasons why I liked and loved tracking tropical cyclones and my experience regarding editing tropical cyclones before I joined this WikiProject.

First of all, I have been watching tropical cyclones but on-and-off since 2012. That year, Hurricane Sandy as I remembered it got significant coverage on my country, Indonesia (Badai Sandy). That hurricane was the first tropical cyclone that I had ever known in my life (it's possible that Hurricane Katrina had significant coverage in my country, but I didn't remember anything at all about it), and without it I would never known about tropical cyclones by myself. When that hurricane was about to be finished, I visited the article about 2012 Atlantic hurricane season on Wikipedia, and it was the first article about tropical cyclones that I have ever read on Wikipedia. From that day, my interest on tropical cyclones grew but it was limited to the Atlantic hurricanes only. When 2013 started, if I'm thinking about tropical cyclones I frequently visited 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, and in particular the Seasonal summary section, which drew my eyes into when I didn't edit tropical cyclone articles yet.

In November 2013, however, as I'm becoming an uncle of one (now three), Typhoon Haiyan showed up. That typhoon which devastated the Southeast Asian brother country of Philippines caused my interest on tropical cyclones to grow outside of Atlantic hurricanes. Now I'm finally aware of what's happening in Pacific, and it was the first time that I learned that tropical cyclones are everywhere in the world, not just Atlantic. That time, I read 2013 Pacific typhoon season as well as 2013 Pacific hurricane season (I don't remember reading these kinds of articles before that). When I read about it, I also visited 2013 Atlantic hurricane season once again and I was shocked by that it wasn't active! As such, I didn't watch tropical cyclones that much for most of 2014 and 2015. Hurricane Patricia didn't convince me enough to watch tropical cyclones again. In 2016, things changed again that led me to make my first edits on tropical cyclones in Wikipedia.

Once Hurricane Matthew came and with it significant coverage on Indonesia that I have never seen since Hurricane Sandy, I finally watched tropical cyclones full-time for the first time. That hurricane was the cyclone that finally got me going for the tropical cyclones (not just the recent seasons, but the older seasons and also SHEM) and my quick-growing interest on tropical cyclones led me to find what made me uncomfortable. That led me to make my first edit on tropical cyclone-related articles in Wikipedia - which was to add Central Pacific to a navigation template about leading tropical cyclones in March 7, 2017. Later that month, I made a second edit, which was to remove a year from a link to Hurricane Omar. These additions are quite "cosmetic" (as said by ChessEric about Hurricane Michelle GA), but soon enough in the next month I found more things that made me more uncomfortable - they are legitimate vandalism. The first edit I made in that month was to revert a vandalism on Hurricane Andrew (I edited it again after that, which was to change mb to mbar). On the next day, I fixed another vandalism in 1954 Atlantic hurricane season. That isn't the end yet, as I found one more vandalism in Hurricane Dennis, and I promptly fixed them.

As I'm getting more invested on tropical cyclone articles, I've eventually heard and found out why some articles didn't have (XXXX year) in them - and it is because that they are primary topics. When I see some articles like Hurricane Linda (1997), which I thought they are primary topics (I eventually realized that they are not, and I have not requested moving these articles under WPTC banner ever since), I sought the same treatment in these kinds of articles that I thought was primary topics and thus I requested moves in many of these said articles under that thought. I believed that these requests will garner support by most of the WPTC members (which I thought will think for the same), but never did I know that these requests gained overwhelming opposes, primarily from WPTC members - and they talked to me about it. Of course, I panicked and I have to withdraw some of these nominations.

That didn't stop me from editing more WPTC articles, and I started to do these requested moves again soon after. This is probably the most successful things I have ever done through my pre-WPTC membership career in the WPTC realm. After withdrawing some of these nominations, I began to work on a split of 1940–49 Pacific typhoon seasons article by starting the discussion on one in May 14. Two weeks later, as I said before, I started requesting more of these nominations in a batch on May 27 - which was wildly successful (only one of them were failed, and that was Tropical Storm Bret of 1993). In a month after these nominations, and with the consensus for split, I finally worked on the split itself. 1940 Pacific typhoon season and 1949 Pacific typhoon season has been split from the article much more earlier, with Hurricanehink creating an article for the 1940 season in May 23, 2014 and Typhoon2013 split the 1949 section from the article in December 19, 2016. I continued what Hurricanehink and Typhoon2013 has been doing, with copying content from the original article into the respective season articles. First, I reverted them to the original before Hurricanehink merged them. Afterwards, I copied the respective sections from the original into respective articles and removed the respective sections in the original article. From the IDs, you can notice that I did this not in order. Afterwards, I moved the original article into 1941–44 Pacific typhoon seasons without moving it's talk page, which I want to admit was a mistake and made a major ramifications (I even started a RfD, which should not happen) in my attempts to get it back without getting it's talk page removed later in October 2020. Once moving the article, I created redirects for the recently moved article (which includes 1941 Pacific typhoon season, 1942 Pacific typhoon season, 1943 Pacific typhoon season, and 1944 Pacific typhoon season, all of which eventually turned into articles), and quickly changed redirects of the respective storms into the newly restored articles. It was a massive effort that day on June 27, 2017, and the experience that I never forgotten.

After that month, I returned into requesting moves once again for the third time, riding on the recent wave of successes. I requested the moves of Hurricane Norman (1978) and Hurricane Liza. Hurricane Liza move request was successful but Norman did not. By that point, the frustration from WPTC members are showing up and by the time I requested moving Typhoon Ida (1958) into Typhoon Ida, I had to be stopped. I also moved Typhoon Pamela (1976) into Typhoon Pamela without any discussion, but you know my intentions by that point, and the move was soon reverted. I had a talk with Yellow Evan regarding these actions, and I soon relented, never requested any moves ever since. I didn't do much for the rest of the year - the most notable moves are moving disambiguation pages Tropical Storm Noru and Tropical Storm Banyan into Typhoon Noru and Typhoon Banyan, respectively. Moving on to the next year, I did not do much once again. Most of the activity that year was working on the most of Tropical Storm Son-Tinh (2018) article. Keep in mind that I plan to return working on that article as a part of 2018 Global FT efforts, and that happened because KN2731 is going to take a break for most of this year.

Onto the 2019, I did something that I think planted the seeds for my future MoTM run and vast WPTC growth in 2020. Most of the activity in general involves creating links to the future articles, but I also fixed redirects for most 1930s seasons and created redirects for the rest of 1960s decade for NIO basin. I planned something greater than that, however, but because I had to use my phone and not my laptop (it was broken) I wasn't able to do so. That plan was a factor leading to me joining the WPTC in July 2020 (after I realized about the benefits of joining the WikiProjects) and I began realizing the plan as soon as I got my laptop back. What I did for the most of August 2020 and September 2020 was mostly set in stone back in the previous year, if you don't notice that. If I didn't plan it back in the day, I don't think I would ever got that MoTM (it would have been Destroyeraa most likely).

That was a story. It is a long story. It took me pains to get myself established in WPTC, but now here I am. If anyone could have invited me back in the year 2018, I would have rejected it like CyclonicallyDeranged, whom I believe has been driven out of Wikipedia. But coming to this year, I realized the benefits of joining the WikiProjects and now, as said by Hurricanehink, I became a vital editor for WPTC.

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 on June 4, 2006. If you wish to receive or discontinue subscription to this newsletter, please visit the member list. New members will automatically receive this newsletter. This issue of The Hurricane Herald covers all project related events from March 1–April 30, 2021. This edition's editors and authors are MarioJump83, Chicdat, Super Cyclonic Storm Corona, HurricaneEdgar, Dam222, AwesomeHurricaneBoss, LightandDark2000, LowercaseGuy (one of the editor's picks for Member of the Month), and our Members of the Month, CycloneFootball71, and CodingCyclone! 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, including past MoTMs and SoTMs, can be viewed here.

WikiProject Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

• After Destroyeraa became inactive (due to school), Hurricane Noah took on the role of the main judge of the Cyclone Cup, starting from the final week of Round 1. He clarified the rules, making it clear that completing a secondary review for Featured or Good Articles, or bringing an article to a peer review was not a way to get points; instead, you have to be the original reviewer of that article. However, for FAs, GAs, and A-Class articles, those who nominate and improve those articles to promotion will earn points for their promotion. This was done to make the Cyclone Cup's rules run closer to those of the WikiCup. In addition, the lengths of Rounds 3 and 4 were extended, to make them more uniform. Rounds 1–3 now last 2 & 1/2 months each, while Round 4 lasts for 2 months, pushing back the end of the Cyclone Cup to October 31. After Noah became the main judge, the first round of the Cyclone Cup ended at 11:59 p.m. UTC on March 31, 2021. LightandDark2000 was the leader in the first round, with 110 points, mainly due to him creating several new articles and getting Tropical Storm Rolf to GA status. MarioJump83 and HurricaneCovid also scored a lot of points this round, raking in 85 and 70 points, respectively. Jason Rees and CodingCyclone also qualified, with 15 and 10 points, respectively. Skarmory and CycloneFootball71 were eliminated for not having any points and also for not ranking in the top 5.

• On April 6, 2021, WPTC was notified of an ongoing process to merge all meteorology projects (except WikiProject Climate Change) into one, WikiProject Weather. This was because many of the weather-related WikiProjects (excluding WPTC) have long suffered from inactivity and a lack of active members. Once merged, the project would run in a similar way to the Military History WikiProject, meaning that it would be a large WikiProject with a broad scope, and the individual WikiProjects would become large Task Forces within the broader WikiProject. The former WikiProjects will essentially continue to function as they do now; the biggest differences will be in the names of the former WikiProjects/new Task Forces and also how the relevant articles are categorized, in addition to more coordination and pooling of resources. The current Task Forces within each WikiProject will also continue to exist, as subdivisions under the larger, primary Task Forces within the Weather WikiProject. The merging process is expected to take a few months as of this issue (May 1, 2021). The actual merger will not be completed until everything is ready.

• Over the past couple of months, WPTC and some of the other Weather WikiProjects went through a period of turmoil, mostly involving perennial edit-warring and hostile behavior from some users (including a handful from outside of the Weather WikiProjects). The negative environment created by these events led two WPTC members to retire (one of whom later opened up to returning) and several others to either go on WikiBreaks or withdraw in some other way. While the worst of the troubles have passed, the WikiProject is still recovering from the fallout. There will be more monitoring of users within and outside of the WikiProject to prevent incidents like these from recurring in the future.

• Sennecaster found some extensive copyvio in quite a few articles under the scope of WPTC, with quite a few coming from WPac articles. She notified the project in late April, and there are a few editors working on finding, removing and reporting copyvio. All articles must be checked as part of this sweep. If you are able to help, your service would be greatly appreciated, Please note that you must contact Sennecaster or someone else who is experienced in fixing copyvio before starting. In addition, please get Sennecaster's consent before starting, as the project is going on in her userspace.

New articles since the last newsletter include:

• 1864 Calcutta cyclone
• 1867 Angela typhoon
• Cyclolysis
• Cyclone Elaine
• Cyclone Peni
• Cyclone Phethai
• Cyclone Sarai
• Cyclone Seroja
• Hurricane Ismael (1989)
• Hurricane Pali
• List of Australian region tropical lows
• Potential Tropical Cyclone Seventeen-E
• Potential Tropical Cyclone Ten
• September 1929 Philippines typhoon
• Timeline of the 2013 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• Tropical cyclones in 1992
• Tropical cyclones in 1993
• Tropical cyclones in 1994
• Tropical cyclones in 1995
• Tropical cyclones in 1996
• Tropical cyclones in Indonesia
• Tropical Storm Claudia (1962)
• Tropical Storm Dawn (1998)
• Tropical Storm Durian (2001)
• Tropical Storm Elida (1996)
• Tropical Storm Gil (2007)
• Tropical Storm Karen (2013)
• Tropical Storm Kirsten (1966)
• Tropical Storm Kujira (2015)
• Tropical Storm Maliksi (2018)
• Tropical Storm Melissa (2019)
• Tropical Storm Merbok (2004)
• Tropical Storm Pakhar (2012)
• Tropical Storm Sarika (2011)
• Tropical Storm Usagi (2001)
• Typhoon Dinah (1952)
• Typhoon Flo (1993)
• Typhoon Gilda (1974)
• Typhoon Ione
• Typhoon Jane
• Typhoon Kai-tak (2005)
• Typhoon Kyle (1993)
• Typhoon Lola (1993)
• Typhoon Louise (1945)
• Typhoon Manny
• Typhoon Mawar (2005)
• Typhoon Olive (1971)
• Typhoon Orchid (1980)
• Typhoon Surigae
• Typhoon Talim (2017)
• Typhoon Toraji (2001)
• Typhoon Usagi (2007)
• Typhoon Vernon (1993)
• Typhoon Viola (1969)

New GA's include:

• 1944 Atlantic hurricane season
• Cyclone Owen
• Hurricane Lorena (2019)
• Pacific Meridional Mode
• Potential Tropical Cyclone Seventeen-E
• Tropical Storm Hernan (2020)

New A-Class articles include Cyclone Leon–Eline and Hurricane Olivia (2018).

Member of the month (Editor's Pick) – Akbermamps and LowercaseGuy

In this edition of Hurricane Herald, I (MarioJump83, one of the Hurricane Herald editors) am going to pick Akbermamps and LowercaseGuy. Both of them contributed to nearly all of the new articles since the publishing of the last issue (and also they contributed to the last issue itself). All of these articles primarily covered the Western Pacific basin, but also they worked on missing Tropical cyclones in xxxx articles and Southern Hemisphere articles. They both were driving factors in some of the greatest growth the WPTC has ever seen since Issues 42, 43, and 44. Both of them are hard workers, who remain civil, and treat others with kindness, despite hardships. Akbermamps also has reverted many nonconstructive edits from many different articles, plus they have made many great edits to tropical cyclone articles, as said above. LowercaseGuy also has made many great edits, per above, plus they have kept the newsletter up to date with all of the new article creations, new GA's, and A-class articles within the project. Because of this, I can only say that I am very proud of them!

2018 Featured Topic Update

Featured Articles promoted (March 1–April 30)

None during this period.

Good Articles promoted (March 1–April 30)

• Cyclone Owen

Current Candidates

• 2018 Pacific hurricane season
• Timeline of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season

New Articles (Only C and below, March 1–April 30)

• Cyclone Phethai
• Tropical Storm Maliksi (2018)

Some updates

Since the last issue of this newsletter, I have noticed that there is an uptick of activity involving 2018 Global FT topic recently. Hurricane Noah came back from almost-retirement, then afterwards improved Hurricane Olivia (2018) into A-class, 2018 Pacific hurricane season within striking distance of it and Timeline of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season potentially became the second featured list we are going to have this year. Meanwhile, I have been focusing all of my efforts in WPTC at improving Cyclone Owen, by Chicdat, into GA status and end all drama between him and all other WPTC editors. Two MoTMs that I have personally picked, Akbermamps and LowercaseGuy, joined the fray (not joining us officially) and improved some 2018 Pacific typhoon season articles that I have created, including the creation of both two articles listed above (and as of right now, Akbermamps is building up Timeline of the 2018 Pacific typhoon season article in his sandbox). I'm very glad to see this happening and I hope this newly found activity could be kept up in the next two months. During these months, I am hoping that Noah might make efforts at improving Hurricane Bud (2018) towards FA eventually. MarioJump83!

We are recruiting

If you are interested in writing new articles, promoting articles to GA, or helping with the FAC review process for the Global 2018 FT project, please reach out to LightandDark2000 or any other member of the 2018 FT task force.

WikiProject To-Do

Member of the month (edition) – CycloneFootball71 and CodingCyclone

In this edition of Hurricane Herald, we present CycloneFootball71 and CodingCyclone as the Members of the Month. Both users joined Wikipedia and WPTC in the year 2020, and they helped us navigate into a better place during the COVID-19 pandemic and during the WPTC conflicts in 2020 and 2021. Their participation lifted and maintained our spirits during the tense situations and what's happening in the world. CycloneFootball71 is the kindest WPTC member we have ever seen, actively giving out barnstars and writing out statements that can be considered as "motivational", never targeting anyone, while also making contributions to articles, and participating in talk-page discussions, and occasionally, reverting vandalism. CodingCyclone, meanwhile, gave Wiki-project Tropical Cyclones the first featured list in years, and she helps out with wording, current cyclones, and other neglected timelines, and all around is kind, and thoughtful to everyone within the Wikipedia community. She is someone who has matured to become a great, and experienced editor here. We thank her for all of her contributions, and hope she continues to keep up the great work, and kindness.

Unfortunately, 2020 was not a kind year for the two of them, particularly for CycloneFootball71, as he suffered from numerous illnesses, a few injuries, the loss of a friend (offwiki) and he retired (though he came back, thankfully) numerous times; these troubles even continued into 2021. Meanwhile, CodingCyclone stayed, but she entered a semi-WikiBreak, due to real life matters she had to attend to. However, both of them are editing at full speed now, and helped us realize what 2021 should be, full of hope and a better year than 2020 was.

New WikiProject Members since the last newsletter

• ‎Tc06cimaron (talk · contribs)
• Floridaball (talk · contribs)
• Stratacus1 (talk · contribs)
• LuigiIsSuppreme989 (talk · contribs)
• Locomotive207 (talk · contribs)

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!

Thank you, JavaHurricane

JavaHurricane, one of the prominent Wikipedia rollbackers since 2019, decided to quit WikiProject Tropical cyclones in April 7, 2021 after series of arguments regarding how the merger of Tropical storms Amanda and Cristobal was handled (though this was later resolved). This followed a series of events that included numerous edit wars, hostile interactions (involving both members and non-members of the Weather WikiProjects), incompetence issues, and trouble dealing with a number of serial vandals. These issues added on more and more stress to some of our members, with the botched handling of the Amanda/Cristobal merger being the last straw, which culminated in several WPTC members, especially the younger ones, to leave the project. Destroyeraa decided to fully retire from Wikipedia, but LightandDark2000 managed to get him consider rejoining WPTC after a lengthy series of off-wiki discussions, contingent upon the WikiProject improving its conduct. A MoTM of this edition, CycloneFootball71 also decided to retire, following the decision of Destroyeraa to quit WPTC, but quickly reconsidered and instead took an indefinite WikiBreak, which later became a Semi-WikiBreak. LightandDark2000 himself also considered quitting from WPTC and leaving Wikipedia entirely (since WPTC activities are his primary reason for being on Wikipedia in the first place), but he decided to stay for now (unless things continue to grow worse, in which case, a full retirement as a registered user is likely). Another MoTM, CodingCyclone, went on a semi-WikiBreak instead of quitting like some of others did.

Although the worst of the turmoil seems to be over now, WPTC is still slowly recovering from the damage. However, it is clear, unfortunately, that JavaHurricane will not return to the project, due to the loss of faith and time. We hope that this will never happen again. To JavaHurricane himself: thank you. Thanks for all the edits you've made in 2020 and in 2021. You are one of the building blocks that led to the WPTC revival last year. Without you, we would have had more difficulty combating some of the LTAs we've recently dealt with. You've made plenty of quality improvements and also carried out a decent amount of anti-vandalism activities. If you ever wish to rejoin the project, you will always be welcome here. We wish you luck in your future endeavors.

Featured Content

From March 1 to April 30, one featured list was promoted.

• Timeline of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season

From the Main Page: Documents WikiProject-related materials that have appeared on the main page from March 1–April 30, 2021 in chronological order.

Today's Featured Article/List

March 11 – Typhoon Maemi

None during this period.

Did you know...?

None during this period.

There is an article currently nominated as featured list candidate:

• Timeline of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season

Article of the Month: Tropical Storm Rolf

Tropical Storm Rolf, also known as Tropical Storm 01M, was an unusual Mediterranean tropical storm that brought flooding to Italy, France, Spain, and Switzerland in November 2011. Rolf originated from an extratropical system near western France on November 4. For the next few days, Rolf moved eastward into the Mediterranean Sea, before making a slow clockwise loop off the coast of France. Despite the generally unfavorable conditions in the Mediterranean Sea, Rolf transitioned into a subtropical depression on November 7, before becoming a tropical storm later that day and turning northeastward. On November 8, Rolf reached its peak intensity, with 1-minute sustained winds peaking at 85 km/h (50 mph, 45 kn) and a minimum central pressure of 991 mb (29.3 inHg). During the next day, the storm turned westward and made landfall on the island of Île du Levant, in France, and soon afterward, near Hyères in southeastern France. Following its second landfall, Rolf quickly weakened, dissipating on November 10. Rolf was the first tropical cyclone ever to be officially monitored by the NOAA in the Mediterranean Sea.

Rolf caused widespread flooding across southwestern Europe, especially in France and Italy, with the majority of the damage from the storm occurring in those two countries. Torrential rainfall from Rolf caused multiple rivers to overflow their banks in France and Italy, flooding multiple cities and resulting in extensive property damage. The storm forced numerous schools and businesses to close temporarily, and also caused significant damage to 300 farms in France. Floodwaters from Rolf's rainfall also cut the power to over 8,000 customers and necessitated thousands of rescues, in addition to forcing thousands of evacuations. The storm also caused the largest flood event seen in Gipuzkoa, in northern Spain since 1983. Rolf killed 12 people, and the storm was also the costliest Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone in the 2010s, with the storm causing at least $1.25 billion (2011 USD, €925 million) in damages.

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 166 featured articles and 70 featured lists. There are 135 A-class articles, and 1,012 good articles. There are only 120 B-class articles, perhaps because because most articles of that quality already passed a GA review. There are 416 C-class articles, 832 start-class articles, and 200 stub-class articles, with 27 lists, and 7 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 →

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.

How to Cite Sources on Tropical Cyclone Articles, by LightandDark2000

In my years of experiences here on WPTC (and on Wikipedia, in general), I've noticed that citing sources properly is a skillset that many editors are lacking in. While a good number of the experienced editors are familiar with how to fill out citations on Wikipedia, this is something that the most of the newer editors struggle with, especially those who have never written a research paper before. Given the influx of new members in WPTC over the past year, I've decided to write a simple tutorial on how to properly complete citations in tropical cyclone articles.

First of all, lets start with a standard citation template. This format will be used for the vast majority of citations on tropical cyclone articles:
<ref>{{cite web|url=|title=|website=|author= |publisher=|location=|date=|access-date=}}</ref>

For our example, lets use this special "Tropical Cyclone Update" advisory for Hurricane Isaias, which was issued when the storm made landfall in North Carolina, early on August 4, 2020 (UTC time).

1. Every citation template is enclosed by the "<ref></ref>" tags. Since we are using a reference template instead of a bare citation, we also have double brackets enclosing the interior of the template. We are citing a web page, so we will enter in "cite web" after the first set of brackets. You can either type out the entire template manually, copy and paste the citation template from above, or use a citation tool (if you know how to use those).
2. To cite this source, first, create or paste the citation template above right after the chunk where you want to cite it (immediately after the period, comma, or whatever punctuation mark is present). Copy the website url (https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2020/al09/al092020.update.08040316.shtml) and paste it after "url=". For NHC and CPHC advisories, please DO NOT EVER use the live/refresh links. Those links are unstable and change each time a new advisory is issued. Only use the links from the Advisory Archives, such as this archive for 2020.
3. Next, copy the title of the advisory and paste it after "title=". The advisory/discussion titles for NHC publications are near the top of the page, below the page heading and below the first lines of text identifying the publication. For NHC publications, the title is located on the third line of text, on the second "paragraph" or group of text. The title for this advisory is "Hurricane Isaias Tropical Cyclone Update".
4. If the source is in a language other than English, then we will also add the "|language=" parameter and specify the language. However, if the source is in English, then this parameter isn't needed.
5. Then, enter in the website title or url for the "website=". For most citations, we use either the "website=" or "publisher=" parameter instead of using both of them; however, we can use them both if the title of the website is significantly different from the name of the publisher. In this example, the website url is "nhc.noaa.gov", so we would enter in this url address after "website=" if we were to use this parameter.
6. After that, enter in the name of the author. We either use the "Last name, First name (and middle initial)" format, or the "Full name (first and last names)" format. Use only one format for consistency. For this example, we will use the "full name" format, as it would naturally appear on print. If there are more than one author, we would add a number after the "author=" parameter, such as "author1=". There are three authors for this advisory, whose last names are: Brown, Zelinsky, and Beven. Simply entering in the last name is NOT ENOUGH. We need their full names. For the NHC and NWS employees, you may need to do a little bit of research to find out their full names (or ask another more experienced editor here on WPTC), which isn't that difficult. A quick Google search shows that their full names are: Daniel Brown, David Zelinsky, and Jack Beven. So then, fill out the author portion of the citation template as follows: "author1=Daniel Brown|author2=David Zelinsky|author3=Jack Beven".
7. Then, enter in the name of the publisher, at "publisher=". For our example, this would be the National Hurricane Center. Since this is an official advisory/bulletin involving a government agency/organization, we also need to fill out the "location=" parameter to indicate the location of the agency's headquarters (we don't need this parameter for citing standard news articles or webpages). The NHC is based in Miami, Florida, so we would fill out the next part of the citation as "location=Miami, Florida".
8. After you have completed the previous steps, enter in both the date and the access-date. We use either the "Month Day, Year" format or the "Day Month Year" format for our citations (the name of the month is fully written out). For the sake of consistency, please use ONLY ONE format. It should remain consistent throughout the article. For this example, we will use the "Month Day, Year" format used in American English, since the NHC's areas of responsibility primarily involve the United States and the Western Hemisphere. The "date" is the date on which the publication or article was published. We use UTC time to determine the date. The advisory was published on 11:15 EDT on August 3, 2020. This is roughly equivalent to 03:15 UTC on August 4, 2020, so the date is "August 4, 2020". The accessdate is the day on which YOU accessed or read the publication. Let's say that you read the advisory on August 6, UTC time. Then, the accessdate would be "August 6, 2020". The dates for this citation should be filled out in this manner: "date=August 4, 2020|access-date=August 6, 2020"

Once you have done all of this, your completed citation should have the following code:
<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2020/al09/ al092020.update.08040316.shtml |title=Hurricane Isaias Tropical Cyclone Update|website=nhc.noaa.gov|author1=Daniel Brown|author2=David Zelinsky|author3=Jack Beven|publisher=National Hurricane Center|location=Miami, Florida|date=August 4, 2020|access-date=August 6, 2020|language=en-US}}</ref>

Which should appear as follows in the article:^[1]

With this tutorial, hopefully you now know how to properly cite sources within tropical cyclone articles. Properly citing sources is a crucial skill on Wikipedia. It allows you to make complete, professional references that can be accessed and reused by just about any other editor. Additionally, creating incomplete or improper citations forces other more experienced users to clean up after you, which not only wastes time, but also prevents an article from becoming a Good Article or Featured Article until these issues are completely resolved. Citing sources is an important skill and one that every experienced editor is expected to master. Citing sources takes time to learn, so don't be discouraged if you don't fully master the art at the beginning. As with everything else in life, new skills require "practice" to perfect, and as you cite more and more sources, you'll find that citing sources becomes easier and faster for you. I hope you find this guide useful in your journey on Wikipedia. May it help mold you into a superb writer, like many other experienced editors who have come before you. Best of luck, and happy editing! ~ LightandDark2000 🌀

Destroyeraa and the Project, by Chicdat, CodingCyclone, CycloneFootball71, MarioJump83, and LightandDark2000

Destroyeraa registered his account on Wikipedia in January 2020. He gained experience like all of us, and received several user rights in the process. He improved several articles to GA status, the first being Hurricane Dolores (2015). He made WikiProject Tropical cyclones a good place to be. He made some mistakes, of course, but learned from them quickly. But by 2021, real life seemed to be catching up to Destroyeraa. He went into periods of semi-wikibreaks. His editing became more sporadic. He has not edited since March 3, 2021. WikiProject Tropical cyclones has experienced plenty of turmoil since then, especially in late March and early April. Some users have been very hostile. There has been copyright problems. Drama is being created. With the exception of a few remarks by LightandDark2000 on-wiki, the project has not heard from him for a long time. I wish that he would come back, and I miss him. When Destroyeraa went, it seems that the short revival of WikiProject Tropical cyclones went with him as well. I came as the renewal of WPTC was beginning, so I knew no other state of the project.

To Destroyeraa himself: Please come back. You made the WikiProject a good place to be. I miss you so much; you were like a real life friend. ~ 🐔 Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!}

Destroyeraa was the person who invited me to the project. Like many others, his hard work and diligence made him a role model to me. Without him, I probably wouldn't be where I am today. He gave me advice when I was trying to improve Hurricane Fran (which I never completed, but would like to do as an honor to him) and helped me realize some of my earlier edits were a bit CIR-y and disruptive (albeit unintentionally). He was always unfailingly civil and helped other editors when they were down. He also created the Cyclone Cup which is actually really fun and something that I personally would never have thought of, and is helping to drive some people to create and improve more articles. To me, he was a symbol of the rebirth of WPTC. When he left, it seemed as though that age disappeared. I know that real life always takes precedence over Wikipedia, but hopefully he can figure out how to balance the two and come back soon. CodingCyclone! 🌀 📘

Destroyeraa has had a profound effect on the WPTC. He has been so helpful and kind throughout his time on Wikipedia, and I want to thank him for that. He has done so much for us throughout his time here, and Wikipedia has not been the same for the project since he left. He has helped me through lots, during some very difficult times, and he has been a great friend. He helped me create my first Opinion piece ever, which helped me get into editing these newsletters for the editors of this project. Despite some mistakes, he overcame these and became even better than before, and he really inspired me to improve myself in the realm of editing tropical cyclones. He did so much for this project, and me and the rest of this Wikiproject want to thank him for all that he has done. I am not sure what else to say, as Chicdat and CodingCyclone said everything that was in my mind. However, he was a great friend. Destroyeraa, you will be missed here on Wikipedia. I hope one day you may return and regain your faith in WPTC again, but for now, I only hope and wish for the absolute best for your life. Thank you again. 🌀CycloneFootball71🏈 |sandbox

Destroyeraa brought me to speed during my initial WPTC tenure as SMB99thx, since I was not that active in my first years and also not aware of Wikipedia's changing guards, like newer users having advanced permissions so quickly, having many user scripts, very communicative on-and-off-wiki (i.e. using Discord), and so much more that I don't understand back when I first joined in WPTC. By learning from him, eventually, I did have the same advanced permissions like his up to last month, having many user-scripts, as well as using a custom theme for Wikipedia, which is not Vector, and its very cool! Without him, I may have been going into a path Chicdat is currently taking right now, as Chicdat wasn't able to stay as a page mover and a rollbacker early in his Wikipedia career, then got into several troubles which led me into adopting him. Now, I am going to give him lessons that I learned from Destroyeraa himself. Other than that, I don't have anything much to say about him, but I hope he's back again to help me once more, and bring me further growth as an editor going forward, which could potentially assist me at shepherding Chicdat into a better place. MarioJump83!

The others above have pretty much captured what I would like to say, and since Destroyeraa and I have stayed in contact off-wiki, I'll make this brief. Destroyeraa was a one-of-a-kind. I've been here for 12 years now, and I have to say that I've rarely ever come across someone like him; even less so in real life. The work he has done in just one year on Wikipedia (as a registered user) is absolutely astounding; it took me 6 years for my editing to reach that level of professionalism. I have not seen anyone like him show up on WPTC since Hurricane Noah joined in 2017. He is really smart, and he is also one of the nicest people I've ever met. And he's a very good friend as well. Destroyeraa, I bet you were able to guess most of what I said here, but you should know that you're a real gem. Those of us here miss you, and there are others as well. And I did tell you that your absence would be felt, didn't I? Regardless of what you think, what you do here does and will affect us. I'm very happy that you've decided to come back this summer, once you get out of school. I hope to see you around the place then. Your friend, LightandDark2000 🌀

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 your subscription to this newsletter, please visit the mailing list. This issue of The Hurricane Herald covers all project-related events from May 1–September 3, 2021. This edition's editors and authors are LightandDark2000, MarioJump83, HurricaneParrot, CodingCyclone, CycloneFootball71, HurricaneCovid, HurricaneEdgar, Jason Rees, and Destroyeraa (the MoTM for this issue). 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 Tropical Cyclones: News & Developments

• A CCI case was filed concerning WPTC.
• The second round of the Cyclone Cup ended earlier than expected on June 13. Jason Rees was eliminated with 0 points. CodingCyclone was in the lead for this round with 105 points for getting Timeline of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season to FL, along with completing a couple reviews and helping Tropical Storm Fay (2020) get to GA. She was followed by MarioJump83 with 80 points for getting Cyclone Owen and Cyclone Kelvin to GA, and LightandDark2000 with 40 points for ITN recognitions and various reviews. HurricaneCovid also managed with 10 points for creating April 2021 nor'easter. The third round ended on September 1. HurricaneCovid was eliminated with 0 points. LightandDark2000 took first place this round with 130 points, from getting two GAs, two DYK nominations, and various reviews. He was followed by CodingCyclone at 50 points, for getting one GA and conducting a couple of reviews. MarioJump came in third, with 10 points.
• WPTC and WPSVR were merged into WikiProject Weather as subprojects in early July, following a series of discussions. Please see the WPTC talk page and Archive 47 of the WPTC talk page for more details. The merger should be fully completed by the end of the year, after WikiProject Meteorlogy is merged into WP Weather.
• A new, user-friendly track map generator for WPTC was created by CodingCactus and CodingCyclone. After a few weeks of work, the track map generator is essentially completed and ready for use. A downloadable software version was developed and released shortly afterward, which can be found here. The online version of the new track map generator can be found here. There is currently an RfC on the WPTC talk page on whether it can be used to upload tracks on Commons.

New articles since the last newsletter include:

• 1737 Calcutta cyclone
• 1839 Coringa cyclone
• 1968 Burma cyclone
• 1985 Bangladesh cyclone
• Cyclone Audrey
• Cyclone Berguitta
• Cyclone Damien
• Cyclone Dinah
• Cyclone Dumazile
• Cyclone Fakir
• Cyclone Felleng
• Cyclone Tauktae
• Cyclone Yaas
• Meteorological history of Hurricane Iota
• Hurricane Elsa
• Hurricane Epsilon (2020)
• Hurricane Grace
• Hurricane Henri
• Hurricane Ida
  • Hurricane Ida tornado outbreak
• Hurricane Pablo
• List of South-West Indian Ocean severe tropical storms
• Timeline of the 2018 Pacific typhoon season
• Timeline of the 2018 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
• Tropical cyclone effects by region
• Tropical Storm Eliakim
• Tropical Storm Ivo (2019)
• Tropical Storm Koguma
• Typhoon Cora (1969)
• Typhoon In-fa
• Typhoon Shanshan (2018)

New GA's include:

• 2020 Atlantic hurricane season
• Cyclone Berguitta
• Cyclone Dumazile
• Cyclone Kelvin
• Hurricane Leslie (2018)
• Hurricane Pali
• Hurricane Paulette
• Potential Tropical Cyclone Ten
• Subtropical Storm Alpha (2020)
• Tropical Storm Eliakim
• Tropical Storm Fay (2020)
• Typhoon Mujigae

Member of the month (Editor's Pick) – Nova Crystallis and Supportstorm

In this edition of Hurricane Herald, I (MarioJump83, one of the Hurricane Herald editors) am going to award Nova Crystallis and Supportstorm with my pick. Both of them are second-generation of WPTC members who joined Wikipedia in 2011 and 2014, respectively. Their most notable work were off-wiki: Nova Crystallis created the WPTC Discord server in August 2018, an idea of Hurricane Noah's, and has since then administered the server to this day, including several server cleanups on the occasions of server disruptions. Supportstorm, meanwhile, is one of the most prolific track creator in all of WPTC, which led some WPTC members (Janm 7 in particular) to ask him for tracks, and as of now, he's actively converting track images from JPG into PNG versions, including the creation of tropical cyclones by year tracks. However, their on-wiki work deserve appreciation as well, since Nova Crystallis has created numerous GA-class WPAC pre-1980 typhoon articles pre-1980, in addition to actively creating GAs for WikiProject U.S. Roads, while Supportstorm takes their time to add their tracks into the articles once they're done and was once assisted in the creation of 1960s North Indian Ocean cyclone season articles back in 2013.

2018 Featured Topic Update

Featured Articles promoted (May 1–September 3)

• Timeline of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season (Featured List)
• Hurricane Olivia (2018)
• 2018 Pacific hurricane season (Featured Topic)

Good Articles promoted (May 1–September 3)

• Cyclone Berguitta
• Cyclone Dumazile
• Cyclone Kelvin
• Hurricane Leslie (2018)
• Tropical Storm Eliakim

Current Candidates

• 2018 Pacific hurricane season
• Cyclone Berguitta
• Cyclone Fakir
• Tropical Storm Ivo (2019)

New Articles (Only B-Class and below, May 1–September 3)

• Timeline of the 2018 Pacific typhoon season

Recent updates

As we entered the summer and the start of the Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclone seasons, several users wrote new articles for the FT project and brought several to GA status.

We are recruiting

If you are interested in writing new articles, promoting articles to GA, or helping with the FAC review process for the Global 2018 FT project, please reach out to Hurricane Noah, LightandDark2000, or any other member of the 2018 FT task force.

WikiProject To-Do

Current assessment table

As of this issue, there are 162 featured articles and 81 featured lists. There are 3 A-class articles, and 1121 good articles. There are only 172 B-class articles, perhaps because because most articles of that quality already passed a GA review. There are 672 C-class articles, 791 start-class articles, and 133 stub-class articles, with 1137 lists, and 0 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 →

Project Goals & Progress

The following is the current progress on the four milestone goals set by the WikiProject as of this publishing. They can be found, updated, at the main WikiProject page.

Member of the month (edition) – Destroyeraa

Destroyeraa joined Wikipedia as an IP editor in 2018. His edits back then were sparse, mostly involving correcting typos and grammar articles in articles that he read. In 2019, he began editing more often, and he started editing articles on weather, especially those on storms in the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season. Although he contributed to those articles, his edits appeared to go unnoticed. On January 17, 2020 (January 18, UTC time), Destroyeraa created his user account on Wikipedia. In May of that year, he joined WPTC, though no one welcomed him for a month. Around this time, he co-created his first article, Tropical Storm Bertha (2020). He also began contributing larger amounts of contents to articles, in addition to creating new ones. In July 2020, Destroyeraa created an article for Hurricane Dolores (2015), which became his first GA later that month. By this time, he had become a regular WPTC editor and a key contributor, often updating the articles for various storms, such as Hurricane Isaias. As time went on, Destroyeraa contributed more content and built up his accomplishments. In October, he got Dolores's article posted to the Did You Know? section on the Main Page, and he got more articles promoted to GA status as well. He also started engaging in anti-vandalism activities, combatting multiple vandals and even some LTAs. However, he was blocked for a week for engaging in sockpuppetry.

Nevertheless, after his block, Destroyeraa resumed contributing to various articles, and he also helped out with the workings of WPTC. In January 2021, Destroyeraa created the Cyclone Cup, a fun competition based on the WikiCup for WikiProject Weather users to participate in, in order to help encourage more article creation and the improvement of article quality. However, by March 2021, his school work caught up with him, and he was forced to take a WikiBreak for the next few months. In early April, Destroyeraa made the decision to retire from Wikipedia, due to a recent spate of drama and negative behavior on WPTC; however, after some off-wiki persuasion, he was persuaded to change his mind. In June 2021, Destroyeraa officially returned to WPTC. While he was a lot more inactive, largely due to summer assignments and real-life activities, he still contributed to Wikipedia from time to time. As of the publication of this newsletter, Destroyeraa has created 24 articles and brought five articles to GA status. He has become one of the most accomplished WPTC users who joined post-2020, and he plans on continuing his work in the future. We wish him the best of luck in his future on Wikipedia and in his studies at school, and we hope to continue seeing him around here.

New WikiProject Members since the last newsletter

1. Sleepinthestars (talk · contribs)
2. SR.1111111 (talk · contribs)
3. BiddybudBoy (talk · contribs)
4. CycloneEditor (talk · contribs)
5. TheGreatSpring (talk · contribs) (Has since gone inactive)
6. Kayree kh (talk · contribs)
7. Destroyeraa (talk · contribs) (Rejoined)
8. SolarisPenguin (talk · contribs)
9. SsSsSølarRadia -75 (talk · contribs)
10. Nakosi (talk · contribs)
11. Kritphon (talk · contribs)
12. FreeWikiFrog (talk · contribs)
13. Drdpw (talk · contribs)
14. André L P Souza (talk · contribs)
15. HurricaneIcy (talk · contribs) (Rejoined)
16. Kellis7 (talk · contribs)
17. ElenaCyclone (talk · contribs)

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!

Thank you, TropicalAnalystwx13, MarioJump83, DachshundLover82, and Cyclone Toby

TropicalAnalystwx13 left Wikipedia in September 2020 without notice. He was one of the most prominent content contributors within the past decade, and he also welcomed some of the other users when they joined. Within the past few months, MarioJump83 went into semi-retirement, and both DachshundLover82 (previously known as Robloxsupersuperhappyface) and Cyclone Toby decided to fully retire from Wikipedia. These users made their decisions after suffering from a lack of interest in editing, a variety of real-life issues (including health issues for DachshundLover82), and also a lack of time. MarioJump83 was an invaluable editor who had made many edits and written multiple aritcles and GAs, and they also brought new users to WPTC, in addition to mentoring Chicdat. DachshundLover82 and Cyclone Toby were both seasoned article writers, having authored multiple articles and even promoting some articles to GA status. Each of these users were MoTM picks in recent issues of The Hurricane Herald. We wish them the best in life and hope to see them again someday.

Featured Content

From May 1 to September 3, a featured list, a featured article, and a featured topic were promoted:

• Timeline of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season
• Hurricane Olivia (2018)
• 2018 Pacific hurricane season

From the Main Page: Documents WikiProject related materials that have appeared on the main page from May 1–September 3, 2021 in chronological order.

Today's Featured Article/List

• June 10, 2021 - Hurricane Fay
• July 9, 2021 - Timeline of the 1996 Atlantic hurricane season
• July 22, 2021 - Hurricane Emily (1993)
• August 10, 2021 - Hurricane Olivia (2018)

Did you know...?

• July 31, 2021 - Tropical Storm Eliakim
• August 15, 2021 - Potential Tropical Cyclone Ten
• August 16, 2021 - Hurricane Pali

There is an article currently nominated for featured article status:

• Cyclone Berguitta

Article of the Month: 2018 Pacific hurricane season

The 2018 Pacific hurricane season was one of the most active Pacific hurricane seasons on record, producing the highest accumulated cyclone energy value on record in the basin. The season saw 26 tropical cyclones, 23 named storms – the fourth-highest value recorded, tied with 1982, 13 hurricanes, and 10 major hurricanes, in addition to one unofficial subtropical storm. The season also featured eight landfalls, six of which occurred in Mexico. The season officially began on May 15 in the Eastern Pacific, and on June 1 in the Central Pacific; they both ended on November 30. These dates conventionally delimit the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the Pacific basin. However, tropical cyclone formation is possible at any time of the year, as illustrated when the first tropical depression formed on May 10, five days prior to the official start of the season.

The accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) index for the 2018 Pacific hurricane season was around 316 units. Broadly speaking, ACE is a measure of the power of a tropical or subtropical storm multiplied by the length of time it existed. Therefore, a stronger storm with a longer duration contributes more to the seasonal total than several short-lived, weaker storms combined. 2018 had the highest total ACE of any Pacific hurricane season on record, having surpassed the 1992 Pacific hurricane season.

Tropical Cyclone Anniversary: August 29, 2005 – Hurricane Katrina

On Monday, August 29, 2005, at 6:10 a.m. CDT (11:10 UTC), Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Buras-Triumph, Louisiana, before making another landfall near the Louisiana–Mississippi border, a few hours later. The storm made landfall as a powerful high-end Category 3 hurricane, with maximum 1-minute sustained winds of 125 miles per hour (201 km/h) and a central pressure of 920 millibars (27 inches of mercury). The storm had weakened from its peak as a Category 5 hurricane, due to an eyewall replacement cycle. Katrina caused the levee system in New Orleans to fail, flooding the city, and causing enormous amounts of destruction. The floods also ended up killing many residents of the city. In all, Katrina killed 1,836 people and caused an estimated $125 billion (2005 USD) in damages, making the storm the costliest hurricane on record in the United States and also worldwide (tied with Hurricane Harvey, without factoring in inflation), and also making the storm one of the deadliest hurricanes to strike the United States in the 21st century.

My Experience on Wikipedia, by LightandDark2000

I joined Wikipedia as an IP editor on May 1, 2009 (May 2, if you go by UTC time). Although a couple of users encouraged me to make an account early on, I decided to continue editing articles from my IPs for the next few years. I just felt that I wasn't ready for a user account yet. In 2010–11, I experienced hounding from another user on some TV show articles, which made me withdraw from those articles for a while and briefly consider quitting Wikipedia. I registered my user account in May 2012, but I spent another year on Wikipedia as an IP editor, before fully transitioning over to my account in the summer of 2013. I also created my first articles in 2012. I pretty much grew used to using my account and decided to stick with it. :) In March 2014, I received an invitation to join WPTC, which I obviously accepted. I had considered myself a member of WPTC since 2012, but I didn't really know about WikiProjects, much less how to join them (otherwise, I would've joined much earlier). Since 2010, I had regularly contributed to articles. While I didn't have a solid grasp of how to cite sources at the time, I managed to contribute a good a mount of content, in addition to cleaning up spelling and grammar errors. As time went on, my article-writing skills improved, and so did my knowledge of Wikipedia policies. I will admit: I did have difficulty at times, and my temper got me into trouble from time to time. However, these mistakes made me more determined to better myself, and avoid the same missteps in the future. I also engaged in anti-vandalism activities quite often, which brought me into conflict with IPhonehurricane95 and his copycap, Lightning Sabre, whom can be considered the two most vicious LTAs that WPTC has had to deal with. In late 2014–early 2017, I largely moved out of WPTC into MILHIST, due to my interest in the recent conflicts involving the terrorist organization ISIL in the Middle East. I contributed a lot to those articles, though I still contributed to tropical cyclone and other weather articles from time to time. I had made some friends on-wiki by this point, including Master of Time and EkoGraf. In early April 2016, a small number of users were fed up with some of my edits and decided to launch a witchhunt in order to get me topic banned (or even completely banned, for some). While the case was eventually dropped, it was very disturbing to me and made me consider permanently retiring from Wikipedia. In August 2016, the combination of college work and stress led me to take a 3-month WikiBreak. I pulled a full exit and considered never coming back.

However, I enjoyed contributing to Wikipedia too much (hehe), and during my winter break, I returned and resumed editing. In 2017, my editing activity gradually ramped up, and in September 2017, I returned to WPTC, following the devastating landfall of Hurricane Harvey in Texas. During my time in MILHIST, my citation skills had greatly improved. Once again, I regularly contributed to tropical cyclone articles, as well as articles on other storms and natural disasters, which I greatly enjoyed. I also observed the peak of the hyperactive 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, including the devastating landfalls of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. However, as I had noted before in some previous Op-Eds and elsewhere, I noticed that WPTC had stagnated, and had serious manpower issues. As we remained a rather small WikiProject for a while, it grew a little depressing at times. In December 2017, a combination of poor habits and overworking myself took its toll on my health and I suffered a severe burnout, and I was forced to leave Wikipedia until late January 2018 (a mistake I intend never to repeat). In 2017 through 2019, WPTC's membership slowly grew in size, a few of whom became very accomplished article-writers over time, and I met Hurricane Noah and others. I eventually acquired a number of user rights in order to help with my work on Wikipedia, including Pending Changes Reviewer, Rollbacker, and Page Mover. I continued tracking tropical cyclones and regularly contributing to those articles through the summer of 2019. However, in September 2019, I took an extended series of WikiBreaks through mid-2020, due to college work and real-life activities.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic went global, and lockdowns ensued. During this time, WPTC began seeing an explosion of new editors, though I remained inactive on-wiki for another several months and missed out the first part of this growth (much to my regret). In July 2020, I finally returned to Wikipedia, during the appearance of Comet NEOWISE and the impending landfall of Hurricane Isaias. Through the remainder of the year, I gradually increased my contributions, though I had to cut back on my editing activity until December, due to college. During this period, I met some of our new WPTC members, including Destroyeraa, HurricaneCovid, CodingCyclone, CycloneFootball71, and AC5230, and I made new friends, growing extremely close to some of them. I became more involved in WPTC's work, and I also helped out some of my fellow users when they needed it. In January 2021, I joined Destroyeraa's Cyclone Cup, a competition he made based on Wikipedia's WikiCup. In the past several months, I've witnessed and experienced several tumultuous episodes on WPTC, but I toughed them out. I continued contributing to various articles during this time, and I also got my first GA, Tropical Storm Rolf, with assistance from Destroyeraa. (Yeah, I didn't have the confidence to attempt a GA before then, even though I probably had the skills to do so since 2017.) In the summer of 2021, my activities began to wane once again, as I turned my attention more towards real-life activities, taking a break, and preparing for the upcoming school year. As of this writing, I am currently in college classes once again. I probably won't remain a regular editor for more than a year (since I will be searching for employment by then) and I will likely be forced into permanent Semi-Retirement then, but truly I appreciate my time here. I've created at least 26 articles and I have 3 GAs, and I'm looking forward to more content creation in the near future.

In closing, I'd like to thank my fellow editors for everything. When I first joined, I was unaware of the existence of this WikiProject (much less WikiProjects in general). I've had a rough start, but I've grown a lot during my time here, both as a writer and as a person. (I have to say, my time editing on Wikipedia really improved my writing and typing skills, which really helped me in school.) I've also made some good friends here. WPTC was also kind enough of a WikiProject for me to feel comfortable retreating to during times of trouble. I've experienced a lot here during my 12 years on Wikipedia, and looking back on it, it was worthwhile. Thank you all for everything, ~ LightandDark2000 🌀 (talk)

My experience on Wikipedia, by codingcyclone

I first joined Wikipedia on May 15, 2020. It's been over a year since then, and I've definitely learned a lot and will continue to learn more about contributing here. When I first joined, I never thought that I would be where I am today. To those who have given me advice and support, and been all around lovely people throughout my journey here (you know who you are), to name a few, hehe, your generosity means a lot to me. You have seen me at my best and at my worst, and you've been there for me through it all. You're all very sweet. codingcyclone ^advisories/_damages 05:59, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To start off, my wikistory isn't all that interesting, and I'm not as experienced or accomplished as the other members of WPTC, but I've been wanting to write an opinion piece, so here we go. I made my first edit the day I joined. I didn't understand the concept of WP:BOLD, so my first few edits were to talk pages to discuss what to do. I also did not know how to sign my posts. LOL. I was a bit naïve, and in retrospect, I did some stuff prematurely. Luckily, I never did anything that was too damaging to the encyclopedia at this stage. At this point, my 'better' edits were mainly typo correcting, and copyediting. My activity was sparse due to IRL stuff from May to September 2020, but by October 2020, I had found out about Twinkle, and was making more edits, mostly to revert vandalism. This led to a minor dispute with an IP after I reverted their edit, which, to me, looked like blanking. I was wrong in classifying it as vandalism, and I violated WP:DEADHORSE when replying a month later. I do think that both the IP and I were wrong in some respects, but they were certainly more experienced than me, and I was definitely mistaken in trying to continue the argument. I continued to fix typos and revert vandalism, until I saw all the neglected tropical cyclone season timelines on Wikipedia, and I started to fix them. I created Timeline of the 2013 North Indian Ocean cyclone season (very incomplete still, I'll get to it soon™) and brought Timeline of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season to FLC (still needs a bit of work, though), leading to its promotion and my first little bronze star. I did my first GAR and helped out with the GANs of Tropical Storm Fay (2020) and Hurricane Paulette. I also helped start off 2021's Atlantic and Eastern Pacific timelines, and actually guided a new editor a bit. As of this edition's release, I'm helping the 2018 FT with timelines for the Southern Hemisphere. My activity is starting to lessen, since I'm going to be kind of busy IRL and I'm trying to manage my life more efficiently and other personal stuff, but I won't forget about Wikipedia. I'll always be here, fixing the timelines up.

Semi-retirement, by MarioJump83

Hi! MarioJump83 here. You know by this point that I'm semi-retired, and you can see the farewell message above by fellow members. I won't give much clarification on why I have semi-retired in this newsletter, but I'm not fully gone just yet.

As I am making this piece, I have removed the DachshundLover82 farewell message which I made by myself as they are strongly reconsidering retirement and became much more active recently, as well as changing some of my farewell message, but as you can tell from these, retirement isn't a sure thing. You can still edit anywhere at any time.

I've got plans to work on Wikipedia in my semi-retirement like Cyclone Cup stuff and Spoken Wikipedia but here's a catch with a little bit of clarification (that's why I said "I won't give much" - that means I still give some clarification eventually): I feel much more restricted than I have ever was since I got my laptop on September 2020 (which led to the peak of my activity next month). I tried to sleep by day and night, but my sleep attempts keep getting disturbed thus leading to lack of sleep. And many more I won't tell for now - there's a lot more than this, but it is more private. I'll can give more about why I semi-retired, but only on WPTC IRC or contact me directly on Discord (you can search SMB99thx on WPTC Discord).

By the way, this will be my final OP on Hurricane Herald, but probably not the final edit on Hurricane Herald yet. Thanks for giving me support, though, for helping me cope through mental stresses for all this time, which my family didn't give much thought about it, if not truly helping at all, since they are all about their business, AND as well as trying to get me regain interest on Wikipedia, but I don't feel like I'm going to come back on full speed this year. Not sure about next year, though.

Tropical cyclone infobox images, by LightandDark2000

In 2016–2018, WPTC experienced a serious of vicious edit wars involving the main infobox image on numerous tropical cyclone articles, the most vicious of which was the Hurricane Ophelia (2017) image war. Most of them were visible satellite images Vs. Infrared satellite (IR) images that were slightly closer to the peak. This series of edit wars affected numerous articles, and they continued until the edit-warriors either stopped with their attempts at changing images or ended up getting blocked (most of those blocked were IPs who continued the edit wars). In August 2020–August 2021, a new series of edit-wars erupted over tropical cyclone infobox images once again. The largest of these newer wars was one that involved Hurricane Delta's infobox image. While many of those conflicts involved the same issue of visible satellite image Vs. IR images seen in the 2016–2018 edit wars, the newer wars also included competing visible satellite images that editors thought looked better than the original, for one reason or another. I have seen these edit wars affect multiple articles (though not as many as the older wars from a few years ago), but after all this warring, multiple WPTC users have grown fed up with it, including me. After various discussions on- and off-wiki, as a project, we have successfully moved more towards discussions first instead of edit-warring, though image-warring still crops up occasionally. First of all, I will say this to those who have participated in the image wars, and those who are inclined to do so in the future: knock it off. Consider this your only warning: If you have image-warred and you have been told to stop, if you do it again, there will be consequences. It does not matter who "started it" or who was "wrong". Edit-warring, especially image wars, are completely unacceptable. Not only are they unacceptable, but they are extremely stupid. WPTC has a set of image policies that dictate what kinds of images should be used in the infoboxes of tropical cyclone articles. While there is some wiggle room for interpretation, these guidelines should be followed regarding the infobox images. You can see the linked page for the image policies themselves, but I will list the most important points here:

• Quality First: Low-quality images are completely unacceptable for use in tropical cyclone infoboxes. If another image is of significantly higher quality than an older one, the older one should be replaced.
• Use the most iconic image whenever possible: The most well-known or famous image of a storm should be used, if it exists. Even if it is not the peak intensity image. An image of the storm at its peak intensity is usually the most iconic image; however, this isn't always the case. The image used should always be the best option for representing the storm. If there is no "most iconic image" in existence, then the most representative visible satellite image should be used.
• Visible satellite images beat non-visible satellite images: Visible satellite images should be used whenever possible. As long as a high-quality visible satellite image exists for a storm and accurately represents it, it should be used over all the other options. And as stated above, this image should be the most representative one of the storm. If there are no high-quality visible satellite images available, or if all of the existing visible satellite images fail to accurately portray the storm, then a high-quality Infrared satellite image may be used instead. And if an IR image is used, it should be colored in.
• Colored images are preferred to non-colored ones: After considering all of points previously listed, a good colored image should be used, if possible. If there is no colored visible satellite image available, then a greyscale image can be used instead. Edited color images made to resemble visible satellite images are acceptable for use, but those should be used with caution, and they should be well-done.
• Discuss First, Don't War: If you want to change an image that has been maintained for a long time on an article, or if you want to change the image for a storm that has a history of edit-warring, please discuss it on the talk page first. DO NOT edit war. A refusal to abide by Wikipedia's policy will have consequences, and these can include topic bans, blocks, or other types of sanctions.

Please consider these guidelines in the future regarding tropical cyclone images and any changes made to them. Editing on Wikipedia should not be stressful or filled with conflict. Instead, editing should be productive, and even enjoyable. We should all keep a level head and take a mature approach in all matters. Hopefully, together, we can make these image wars a thing of the past. ~ LightandDark2000 🌀 (talk)