User talk:Skarmory/Newsletters and mass messages 1

44th edition of The Hurricane Herald!

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Volume XLIV, Issue 44, December 1, 2020 ←(Previous issues) 41 · 42 · 43 · 44 · 45 → The Hurricane Herald: Happy Thanksgiving Edition! The Hurricane Herald is the semi-regular newsletter of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The newsletter aims to provide in summary the recent activities and developments of the WikiProject, in addition to global tropical cyclone activity. The Hurricane Herald has been running since its first edition ran on June 4, 2006. If you wish to receive or discontinue subscription to this newsletter, please visit the mailing list. This issue of The Hurricane Herald covers all project related events from 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 Here are some tasks you can do: Requests: List of named storms from C to H and M to P, List of Eastern Pacific tropical depressions and other intensity lists, Pacific typhoon seasons from 1902 to 1938, Australian region cyclone seasons from 1963 to 1970, South Pacific cyclone seasons from 1958 to 1969, Tropical cyclones in 2002, 1870 Straits of Florida hurricane, 1864 Calcutta cyclone, Hurricanes in Mexico, Tropical cyclone effects by region, more... Citation needed: Make sure articles like for example Pacific hurricane, Tropical cyclones in 2013 and Tropical cyclones in 2007 are cited properly. Cleanup: Tropical cyclones in India, Tropical cyclones in Myanmar, Tropical cyclones in Sri Lanka, List of Texas hurricanes (pre-1900), Typhoon Faxai and other storms in 2019 Pacific typhoon season (and the season article itself), 2020 Pacific typhoon season Expand: Indianola Hurricane of 1886, 1936 Mid-Atlantic hurricane, Seasonal summaries and global condition sections for nearly every tropical cyclones by year articles, Pacific hurricane season timelines and earlier season articles in 1950s, 1941/1942/1943/1944 Pacific typhoon seasons, List of named storms (J)/(K)/(T), Tropical Storm Fay (2008), Typhoon Winnie (1964) Stubs: Typhoon Trix (1952), 1876 Bengal cyclone, 1971 Odisha cyclone, 1978 Sri Lanka cyclone, Typhoon Kathleen (1947), 1900s/1910s/1920s/1930s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons, 1900s/1920s/1930s Australian region cyclone seasons, more... 20th Anniversary push: some goals for the 20th year of Wikipedia (January 15, 2021!) include the creation or improvement of many other articles listed in the first section on the WPTC talk page. 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. 250 featured pages: 91.2% complete 200 featured articles: 79.5% complete 1500 good articles: 73.1% complete Storms of the month over the last year Month Storm November 2020 Hurricane Iota October 2020 Typhoon Goni (2020) September 2020 Cyclone Ianos August 2020 Hurricane Laura July 2020 Hurricane Isaias June 2020 Tropical Storm Cristobal (2020) May 2020 Cyclone Amphan April 2020 Cyclone Harold March 2020 Cyclone Herold February 2020 Cyclone Damien January 2020 Cyclone Tino December 2019 Cyclone Ambali November 2019 Cyclone Bulbul October 2019 Typhoon Hagibis Storms of the month and other tropical activity for October and November SotM for October: Typhoon Goni / Rolly Typhoon Goni formed from east of The Philippines towards the end of October, just as Typhoon Molave ravaged the country. Taking in the plentiful favorable conditions, Goni, known as Rolly in The Philippines, explosively intensified into a Category-5 equivalent hurricane just three days after it became a tropical depression. An eyewall replacement cycle managed to curb its intensification. Goni finished the cycle a few hours before it made landfall, and explosively intensified again into winds of 195 mph (JTWC) and a pressure of 884 mbar. This allowed it to tie with typhoons Haiyan and Meranti as the strongest typhoon by wind speed. Goni made landfall at peak intensity, killing 25 people and causing US$368 million in damage. SotM for November: Hurricane Iota Hurricane Iota developed in the central Caribbean Sea in mid-November. Like Goni, it explosively intensified, strengthening 120 mph in 48 hours, and deepening 81 mbar in the same amount of time. Iota explosively strengthened late on November 15 and early on November 16, becoming a Category 5 hurricane at 15:00 UTC on the 16th. By the time Iota had achieved C5 intensity, three people were already dead in Colombia due to landslides. As the storm made landfall, and subsequently weakened and dissipated, adding to the destruction from Hurricane Eta. Iota killed at least 61 people. Atlantic - Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota. The active Atlantic hurricane season continued. In early October, Tropical Storm Gamma dissipated over the northern Yucatan and was absorbed by powerful Hurricane Delta, which was the season's third major hurricane. Delta weakened before hitting Quintana Roo, but restrengthened in the Gulf of Mexico, later hitting Louisiana as a low-end Category 2 hurricane in nearly the same location as Hurricane Laura in August. Delta killed six people and left US$4 billion in damage. A few days later, Hurricane Epsilon developed southeast of Bermuda, becoming a major hurricane and brushing the island to the east. Hurricane Zeta followed a similar path as Delta, striking Quintana Roo and later striking southeastern Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane; it killed 8 people and left U$3 billion in damage. At the end of the month, Hurricane Eta developed, becoming a strong Category 4 hurricane before striking Nicaragua. After killing hundreds of people in Central America, Eta reformed in the northwestern Caribbean. It made another landfall in Cuba, moved over the Florida Keys, and briefly became a hurricane again in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, before weakening and striking Cedar Key, Florida as a tropical storm. In early November, Tropical Storm Theta developed from a non-tropical low and moved across the eastern Atlantic. Eastern Pacific - Tropical Storm Norbert was the basin's only storm in October. It formed southwest of Mexico, though wind shear killed it off within a few days. Norbert then pulled a surprise on meteorologists: it regenerated into a tropical storm again on October 13, although it eventually dying again two days later. In early November, the season's next system, Tropical storm Odalys, formed, which remained weak off southwest Mexico. After an 11-day lull in activity, Tropical Storm Polo southwest of Mexico, which dissipated two days after its formation. Western Pacific - In early October, Typhoon Chan-Hom passed south of Japan and turned to the southeast, dissipating after 12 days. A series of storms affected Vietnam, causing deadly floods that killed over 200 people. In short succession, tropical storms Linfa and Nangka struck the country. Typhoon Saudel moved across the Philippines and later struck Vietnam. Typhoon Molave crossed the central Philippines and later hit Vietnam, killing 71 people. After the powerful Typhoon Goni, Tropical Storm Atsani reached peak intensity southeast of Taiwan before dissipating. In early November, Tropical Storm Etau struck southeastern Vietnam, followed days later by Typhoon Vamco, which crossed the Philippines and hit central Vietnam. 2020 North Indian Ocean cyclone season - after a long hiatus, the season sprang to life with one deep depression and two tropical depressions in October. Deep Depression BOB 02 killed 98 people in Central India, and flooded the city of Hyderabad. The system redeveloped into a depression in the Arabian Sea. Later in the month, a depression struck West Bengal. In November, Cyclone Gati explosively intensified before hitting northeastern Somalia, becoming the strongest tropical cyclone on record there; Gati killed at least eight people after dropping more than a year's worth of rain. Later in the month, Cyclone Nivar struck southeastern India. As the month ended, another depression was developing east of Sri Lanka. 2020–21 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season - The season began in November when Tropical Cyclone Alicia formed in the central Indian Ocean, alongside a tropical depression. 2020–21 Australian region cyclone season - The season also began in November with a tropical low in the central Indian Ocean. 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! More information can be found here. This list lists members who have joined/rejoined the WikiProject since the release of the last issue. Sorted chronologically in order of which they joined. 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! Write the next issue of The Hurricane Herald →

Welcome to the 2021 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. We thank Vanamonde93 and Godot13, who have retired as judges, and we thank them for their past dedication. The judges for the WikiCup this year are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:11, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

45th edition of the Hurricane Herald!

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Volume XLV, Issue 45, January 15, 2021 ←(Previous issues) 42 · 43 · 44 · 45 · 46 → The Hurricane Herald: Wikipedia's 20th Anniversary and New Year's Special Edition! The Hurricane Herald is the semi-regular newsletter of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The newsletter aims to provide in summary the recent activities and developments of the WikiProject, in addition to global tropical cyclone activity. The Hurricane Herald has been running since its first edition ran on June 4, 2006. If you wish to receive or discontinue subscription to this newsletter, please visit the mailing list. This issue of The Hurricane Herald covers all project related events from 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 Here are some tasks you can do: Requests: List of named storms from E to H and M to O, List of Atlantic tropical storms and other intensity lists, Pacific typhoon seasons from 1902 to 1938, Australian region cyclone seasons from 1963 to 1970, South Pacific cyclone seasons from 1958 to 1969, Tropical cyclones in 1978 to 2001, 1870 Straits of Florida hurricane, 1864 Calcutta cyclone, Hurricanes in Mexico, Tropical cyclone effects by region, more... Citation needed: Make sure articles like for example Pacific hurricane and Cyclone Owen are cited properly. Cleanup: Tropical cyclones in India, Tropical cyclones in Myanmar, Tropical cyclones in Sri Lanka, List of Texas hurricanes (pre-1900), Typhoon Faxai and other storms in 2019 Pacific typhoon season (and the season article itself), 2020 Pacific typhoon season Expand: List of depressions and deep depressions in the North Indian Ocean, List of South-West Indian Ocean tropical cyclones, Seasonal summaries and global condition sections for nearly every tropical cyclones by year articles, Pacific hurricane season timelines and earlier season articles in 1950s, 1941/1942/1943/1944 Pacific typhoon seasons, most of the List of named storms articles, Tropical Storm Fay (2008) Stubs: Typhoon Trix (1952), 1876 Bengal cyclone, 1971 Odisha cyclone, 1978 Sri Lanka cyclone, Typhoon Kathleen (1947), 1900s/1910s/1920s/1930s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons, 1900s/1920s/1930s Australian region cyclone seasons, more... 2018 Global FT push: some goals for the 2018 Global FT include the creation or improvement of many other articles listed in the first section on the WPTC talk page. Also please join our task force! 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. 250 featured pages: 91.2% complete 200 featured articles: 79.5% complete 1500 good articles: 73.1% complete Storms of the month over the last year Month Storm Storm of the Year 2020 Hurricane Eta December 2020 Cyclone Yasa November 2020 Hurricane Iota October 2020 Typhoon Goni (2020) September 2020 Cyclone Ianos August 2020 Hurricane Laura July 2020 Hurricane Isaias June 2020 Tropical Storm Cristobal (2020) May 2020 Cyclone Amphan April 2020 Cyclone Harold March 2020 Cyclone Herold February 2020 Cyclone Damien January 2020 Cyclone Tino Storm of the month and other tropical activity for December through January 15, 2021 Storm of the month for December  – Cyclone Yasa Yasa was a powerful and destructive tropical cyclone that struck the island nation of Fiji in December 2020. The second tropical tropical disturbance, and the first and strongest severe tropical cyclone of the season, Yasa originated from a low pressure area on December 10, to the north of Port Vila, in Vanuatu. The storm became a tropical disturbance on the next day and was given the designation 02F by the Fiji Meteorological Service (FMS). The system gradually strengthened over the next couple of days while moving southeastward, reaching tropical storm-equivalent status (Category 1 tropical cyclone on the Australian scale) and receiving the name Yasa on December 13. For the next 3 days, Yasa made a slow clockwise loop, during which time it underwent rapid intensification from December 14 to 16, bombing out from tropical storm-equivalent status to a Category 5-equivalent tropical cyclone on both the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (SSHWS) and the Australian scale. On December 16, Yasa reached its peak intensity, with maximum 10-minute sustained winds of 250 km/h (155 mph), maximum 1-minute sustained winds of 260 km/h (160 mph), and a minimum central pressure of 899 millibars (26.5 inHg). This made Yasa the fourth-most intense tropical cyclone recorded in the South Pacific basin, as well as the second Category 5 severe tropical cyclone in 2020, after Cyclone Harold. Afterward, Yasa underwent an eyewall replacement cycle as it neared Fiji, causing the storm to weaken. Early on December 17, Yasa made landfall on Bua Province on Vanua Levu, as a powerful Category 4-equivalent tropical cyclone on the SSHWS (Category 5 severe tropical cyclone on the Australian scale). Following landfall, Yasa quickly weakened, dropping back to tropical storm-equivalent status within two days. Afterward, Yasa moved in a southward direction while continuing its weakening trend, falling below tropical cyclone status on December 19, and dissipating on December 24. Yasa killed 4 people in Fiji and left another person missing. As of this writing, the damage estimates for Yasa are still being calculated, but Yasa had caused extensive damage on Vanua Levu, likely becoming the most destructive tropical cyclone to strike Fiji since Winston in 2016. North Atlantic – This season, after being the most active on record for its basin, in terms of tropical cyclone formation, officially ended on November 30. Eastern Pacific – This season, along with the Atlantic hurricane season, ended on November 30. Western Pacific – Tropical Storm Krovanh (Vicky) developed over the Philippine Sea. The storm is the third tropical cyclone to receive the name Vicky in the year 2020. The storm made landfall on Palawan on December 19, and eventually moved into the South China Sea. North Indian Ocean – Activity continued into December, with the strengthening of Cyclonic Storm Burevi in the Bay of Bengal. Burevi then made landfall in Sri Lanka a few days later. South-West Indian Ocean – The third cyclone of the season, Tropical Storm Bongoyo, formed, gradually strengthening over open waters. Within a few weeks, the season began to ramp up, with the formation Tropical Storm Chalane, before it made landfall on Madagascar and in Mozambique. After a tropical depression left the basin, another system would form, becoming Tropical Storm Danilo. On January 14, another Zone of Disturbed Weather developed over the central south Indian Ocean, which became Tropical Depression 07 two days later. Australian region – A tropical low formed, slowly developing, before gaining tropical-storm strength winds. Soon after, another tropical low formed, this making landfall along the Pilbara Coast of Australia with tropical storm-force winds. Within just a few days, yet another tropical low formed that made landfall along the Kimberly Coast. After a series of two more tropical lows, another system formed. This low would strengthen into Tropical Cyclone Imogen, before making landfall along the Queensland Coast. A seventh tropical low developed on January 5, before dissipating five days later. On January 13, an eighth tropical low, 07U, developed east-northeast of the Cocos Islands. South Pacific – The first system of the season, 01F, formed on December 11. Within a few days, the season began to ramp up, with the development of Tropical cyclones Yasa and Zazu, with the former rapidly intensifying and becoming a powerful Category 5-equivalent cyclone. Yasa went on to make landfall on the island of Vanua Levu in Fiji on December 17, becoming the most powerful tropical cyclone to strike the island nation since Winston in 2016. South Atlantic – On December 27, Subtropical Storm Oquira, the second storm of the season, formed in the South Atlantic, off the coast of Brazil. The system lasted for several days as a subtropical storm while moving away from Brazil, before transitioning into an extratropical low on December 31. Storm of the Year 2020 – Hurricane Eta Eta was a powerful and long-lived hurricane that devastated Central America in November 2020. The twenty-ninth tropical depression, record-tying twenty-eighth named storm, twelfth hurricane, and fifth major hurricane of the extremely active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, Eta originated from a vigorous tropical wave in the eastern Caribbean Sea on October 28. On October 30, the system organized into Tropical Depression Twenty-Nine, before becoming a tropical storm on the next day, at which time it was given the name Eta by the National Hurricane Center (NHC). On November 2, Eta became undergoing rapid intensification over the western Caribbean, as it progressed westward, with the cyclone ultimately becoming a Category 4 hurricane on November 3. Later that day, Eta reached its peak intensity, with 1-minute sustained winds of 150 mph (240 km/h) and a minimum central pressure of 922 mbar (hPa; 27.23 inHg), it was the third-most intense November Atlantic hurricane on record, behind the 1932 Cuba hurricane, and Hurricane Iota, which struck the same region just two weeks later. However, satellite data suggests that Eta may have reached Category 5 intensity at the time of its peak intensity, since reconnaissance aircraft failed to sample the hurricane's strongest winds at the time of its peak intensity. Despite this, in their post-storm report, the NHC maintained Eta as a powerful Category 4 hurricane. Six hours after reaching its peak, Eta underwent an eyewall replacement cycle, causing the storm to weaken somewhat. At 21:00 UTC on November 2, Eta made landfall south of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 km/h) and a central pressure of 940 mbar (hPa; 27.76 inHg). Following landfall, Eta rapidly weakened to a tropical depression by 00:00 UTC on November 5. Despite the mountainous terrain, Eta's low-level circulation survived, and Eta retained tropical depression status for another day, during its two-day trek across Central America, before degenerating into a remnant low overland later on November 5. On November 6, Eta's remnant low moved north over water and regenerated into a tropical depression, before turning towards the northeast. Afterward, Eta reorganized into a tropical storm over the Caribbean on November 7, as it accelerated toward Cuba. On the next day, Eta made landfall on Cuba's Sancti Spíritus Province as a tropical storm, before quickly emerging into the Atlantic and turning westward. Over the next five days, the system moved erratically, making a third landfall on Lower Matecumbe Key in the Florida Keys, on November 9, before slowing down and making a counterclockwise loop in the southern Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of Cuba, with the storm's intensity fluctuating along the way. Afterward, Eta turned north-northeastward and briefly regained Category 1 hurricane strength on November 11, before weakening back into a tropical storm several hours later. On November 12, Eta made a fourth landfall over Cedar Key, Florida. Eta weakened after making landfall, before eventually re-emerging into the Atlantic later that day. Afterward, Eta became extratropical on November 13, before being absorbed into another frontal system off the coast of the Eastern United States on the next day. In all, Hurricane Eta killed at least 211 people, left 120 people missing, and caused at least $7.9 billion (2020 USD) in damages, with the vast majority of the deaths and damages occurring in Central America. Just two weeks later, Central America was struck by Hurricane Iota as a high-end Category 4 hurricane, making landfall near the same location as Eta, which further exacerbated the disaster in the region. 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 More information can be found here. This list lists members who have joined/rejoined the WikiProject since the release of the last issue. Sorted chronologically. 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!) Write the next issue of The Hurricane Herald →

46th issue of Hurricane Herald newsletter

Extended content

Volume XLVI, Issue 46, March 1, 2021 ←(Previous issues) 43 · 44 · 45 · 46 · 47 → The Hurricane Herald 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: The Frozen Times, WikiProject Severe Weather. 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 Here are some tasks you can do: Requests: The rest of intensity lists, Pacific typhoon seasons from 1902 to 1938, Australian region cyclone seasons from 1963 to 1970, South Pacific cyclone seasons from 1958 to 1969, Tropical cyclones between 1978 and the newest article, 1870 Straits of Florida hurricane, 1864 Calcutta cyclone, Hurricanes in Mexico, Tropical cyclone effects by region, more... Citation needed: Make sure articles like for example Pacific hurricane and Tropical cyclones in year articles are cited properly. Cleanup: Tropical cyclones in India, Tropical cyclones in Myanmar, Tropical cyclones in Sri Lanka, List of Texas hurricanes (pre-1900), Typhoon Faxai and other storms in 2019 Pacific typhoon season (and the season article itself), 2020 Pacific typhoon season Expand: List of depressions and deep depressions in the North Indian Ocean, List of South-West Indian Ocean tropical cyclones, Seasonal summaries and global condition sections for nearly every tropical cyclones by year articles, Pacific hurricane season timelines and earlier season articles in 1950s, 1941/1942/1943/1944 Pacific typhoon seasons, most of the List of named storms articles, Tropical Storm Fay (2008) Stubs: Typhoon Trix (1952), 1876 Bengal cyclone, 1971 Odisha cyclone, 1978 Sri Lanka cyclone, Typhoon Kathleen (1947), 1900s/1910s/1920s/1930s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons, 1900s/1920s/1930s Australian region cyclone seasons, more... 2018 Global FT push: some goals for the 2018 Global FT include the creation or improvement of many other articles listed in the first section on the WPTC talk page. Also please join our task force! Storms of the month over the last year Month Storm February 2021 Cyclone Guambe January 2021 Cyclone Eloise Storm of the Year 2020 Hurricane Eta December 2020 Cyclone Yasa November 2020 Hurricane Iota October 2020 Typhoon Goni (2020) September 2020 Cyclone Ianos August 2020 Hurricane Laura July 2020 Hurricane Isaias June 2020 Tropical Storm Cristobal (2020) May 2020 Cyclone Amphan April 2020 Cyclone Harold March 2020 Cyclone Herold Storm of the month and other tropical activity for the rest of January and February SoTM for January – Cyclone Eloise Cyclone Eloise formed in January 14, to the east of another system, Cyclone Joshua, in the central South Indian Ocean. The disturbance developed into a tropical depression on January 16, and on the next day, the depression intensified into Moderate Tropical Storm Eloise. Eloise struggled to intensify, due to unfavorable conditions; however, the storm still managed to intensify further into Severe Tropical Storm Eloise on January 19. This strengthening trend did not last long, as Eloise made landfall in northern Madagascar, and interaction with mountains caused Eloise to weaken into a moderate tropical storm once more. Eloise emerged into the Mozambique Channel on January 20 and started intensifying again, despite having recently experienced a sustained land interaction. However, the storm slowed down, due to the location and the surrounding environment. Later on, Eloise managed to intensify into a full-fledged tropical cyclone, before proceeding to undergo rapid intensification as the storm neared landfall. Eloise peaked as a Category 2-equivalent tropical cyclone just before making landfall near Beira, Mozambique, on January 22, which had been affected by Tropical Storm Chalane just weeks prior, and was still recovering from the devastating impacts of Cyclone Idai nearly two years ago. Eloise then degenerated into a remnant low above Zimbabwe on January 25, and per JTWC, the remnants of Eloise soon dissipated above Botswana on January 26. Eloise caused numerous disasters throughout numerous countries, specifically, in Madagascar, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Eswatini, and Mozambique. Mozambique was the hardest-hit. In Madagascar, Eloise destroyed 190 homes and caused the death of one person. In South Africa, Eloise caused the deaths of 10 people, four of which were children, in addition to being responsible for making another 7 people go missing. In Zimbabwe, Eloise caused damage and destruction to nearly a thousand homes, some of which were badly affected by Idai two years ago. Three people were also swept away by flooding from Eloise and were presumed to be dead. In Eswatini, over 1,500 people were affected by the storm, two of whom were killed. Eloise also damaged the water system and flooded the gravel roads and low-lying bridges. In Mozambique, the residents compared the cyclone's impacts to Cyclone Idai, which had catastrophically devastated the country two years earlier. This storm caused psychological trauma and mental health crises among the residents of the country. Eloise caused nine deaths in Mozambique, but massive amounts of farmland were flooded, and the storm also damaged over 30,000 houses, the majority of which were destroyed by the storm. 579 classrooms and 86 health centers had to be repaired after the storm. SoTM for February – Cyclone Guambe Cyclone Guambe formed as a disturbance in the Mozambique Channel in February 10. The disturbance subsequently transitioned into a subtropical depression two days later, as it made landfall in Mozambique. For the next several days, the system made a slow counterclockwise loop over Mozambique, while slowly organizing. The system re-emerged into the Mozambique Channel on February 16 and was designated as Tropical Disturbance 11. The disturbance was soon upgraded into a depression later that day, and the storm became Moderate Tropical Storm Guambe on the next day. Subsequently, Guambe proceeded to strengthen, intensifying into a severe tropical storm on February 18. Guambe then began to undergo rapid intensification, becoming a tropical cyclone on February 19, before peaking later that day as a Category 2-equivalent tropical cyclone. However, Guambe then underwent an eyewall replacement cyclone and began to weaken on February 20, as the storm accelerated towards the southeast. On February 21, Guambe became extratropical, Guambe was later absorbed by another extratropical cyclone on February 23. Guambe caused widespread flooding in Mozambique, which displaced over 27,000 people and worsened the ongoing crisis in the region. Prisoners had to be transferred away from the cyclone because of potential flooding. There were no deaths recorded and damages were unknown, however the worst part of Guambe wasn't there yet. South Africa were also flooded by Guambe, which might have been caused by the secondary low-level circulation center (LLCC) of Guambe. This secondary LLCC had caused Guambe to slow down, which probably had devastating effects on Bazaruto Archipelago National Park's marine life, as 186 Spinner dolphins were probably killed by the storm. After Guambe re-emerged into the Mozambique Channel, no additional damage to human property was reported, thus marking the end of Guambe's impacts on land. Western Pacific – The West Pacific basin saw its first tropical cyclone of the year develop, which was a tropical depression. This storm affected the Philippines for two days, on January 19–20. Another tropical cyclone developed in the next month, which developed into Tropical Storm Dujuan. Dujuan was not as damaging as the first tropical depression, but it ended up being deadlier. Dujuan dissipated soon after impacting the Philippines. South-West Indian Ocean – Eloise, the seventh named storm of the season, formed on January 14, before becoming a named storm three days later. On January 19, Eloise made landfall on Madagascar as a moderate tropical storm. Afterward, the storm moved into the Mozambique Channel, undergoing rapid intensification as it neared Mozambique, before making landfall near Beira, Mozambique at peak intensity on January 23, as a Category-2 equivalent tropical cyclone, with the storm strengthening all the way up to landfall. Eloise weakened as it moved inland, dissipating on January 25. On January 17, Joshua entered the South-West Indian Ocean basin from the Australian region basin, before dissipating two days later. On January 27, Tropical Low 10U entered the basin from the Australian region, which was classified as Tropical Depression 09. The depression never strengthened into a tropical storm and soon dissipated on the next day. Faraji formed on February 4, and became a tropical storm next day. Faraji explosively intensified to become the first Category 5-equivalent tropical cyclone (according to JTWC estimates) in the basin since Fantala in 2016, and the first Category 5-Equivalent tropical cyclone worldwide in 2021. Faraji was projected to restrengthen, and possible threaten land areas as it tracked westward towards Madagascar; however, this threat never materialized, as the storm encountered more hostile conditions and weakened instead. The storm degenerated into a remnant low on February 13, before dissipating 3 days later. Guambe formed on February 10, and became a subtropical depression two days later, while making landfall near Inhambane, Mozambique. The system remained inland until February 16, when it re-emerged into the Mozambique Channel and was designated as Tropical Disturbance 11. The disturbance then began to strengthen, becoming a tropical storm on the next day, and a tropical cyclone later three days later. Guambe peaked as a Category 2-equivalent tropical cyclone on February 19. The cyclone was forecasted to strengthen even further; however, Guambe underwent an eyewall replacement cycle and began to weaken. The storm became post-tropical on February 21 and dissipated two days later. Australian region – On January 16, Tropical Low 07U intensified into Tropical Cyclone Joshua. Afterward, five more storms developed in the basin within the second part of the month: Tropical Low 08U, Tropical Cyclone Kimi, Tropical Low 10U, Tropical Low 11U, and Tropical Low 12U. Joshua moved into the South-West Indian Ocean basin on January 17. On January 21, 08U made landfall in the Western Territory of Australia, before dissipating two days later. Kimi meandered off the coast of Queensland from January 16 to 19, before dissipating offshore. 10U formed to the southeast of Christmas Island and remained over water throughout its duration. 10U exited the basin into the South-West Indian Ocean on January 27. On January 25, Tropical Low 11U formed, followed by Tropical Low 12U on January 28. 11U became Lucas and exited the basin as it peaked on February 1. Tropical Low 12U remained overland for most of its existence, moving parallel to the western coastline of Australia for 5 days, before emerging over open water on February 4. 12U never reached tropical cyclone intensity, and became extratropical on the next day. However, the storm turned back towards Australia and resumed moving parallel to the coast, before dissipating several days later. Tropical Low 13U formed on February 6, a day after 12U became extratropical, and made landfall near the North Territory–Queensland border, before dissipating on February 8. Another tropical low, 14U, formed ten days later, and lasted for five days before dissipating. Tropical Low 15U formed on February 23 and became Marian. Marian eventually proceeded to undergo rapid intensification, becoming a Category 3 severe tropical cyclone on February 28, making it the most intense cyclone of the season, as of this writing. Tropical Low 16U formed near the end of the month. South Pacific – Tropical Disturbance 04F developed to the west of Port Vila, Vanuatu, on January 22. Several days later, Tropical Disturbances 05F and 06F developed near Fiji. All three systems organized into tropical depressions by January 28. 04F and 06F never developed into tropical cyclones, while 05F became Cyclone Ana. Cyclone Ana dissipated February 1, the same day that Cyclone Lucas entered the basin. Lucas became subtropical on February 3, before dissipating shortly afterward. On February 7, Tropical Disturbance 09F formed and nearly reached tropical cyclone status, before dissipating. Two weeks later, Tropical Disturbance 10F developed near Wallis and Futuna but never developed into a tropical depression. South Atlantic – On February 4, a rare, fully-tropical storm was designated in the basin as 01Q by the NOAA. The storm lasted briefly before losing tropical characteristics, with the NOAA discontinuing their bulletins later that day. However, the Brazilian Navy Hydrographic Center never issued advisories on the storm. 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 More information can be found here. This list lists members who have joined/rejoined the WikiProject since the release of the last issue. Sorted chronologically. 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. 250 featured pages: 91.2% complete 200 featured articles: 79.5% complete 1500 good articles: 73.1% complete 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 edited about the coronavirus epidemic before it became a worldwide pandemic. 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. Write the next issue of The Hurricane Herald →

WikiCup 2021 March newsletter

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Round 1 of the competition has finished; it was a high-scoring round with 21 contestants scoring more than 100 points. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 55 contestants qualifying. You will need to finish among the top thirty-two contestants in Round 2 if you are to qualify for Round 3. Our top scorers in Round 1 were: Epicgenius led the field with a featured article, nine good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 945 points. Bloom6132 was close behind with 896 points, largely gained from 71 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths. ImaginesTigers, who has been editing Wikipedia for less than a year, was in third place with 711 points, much helped by bringing League of Legends to featured article status, exemplifying how bonus points can boost a contestant's score. Amakuru came next with 708 points, Kigali being another featured article that scored maximum bonus points. Ktin, new to the WikiCup, was in fifth place with 523 points, garnered from 15 DYKs and 34 "In the news" items. The Rambling Man scored 511 points, many from featured article candidate reviews and from football related DYKs. Gog the Mild, last year's runner-up, came next with 498 points, from a featured article and numerous featured article candidate reviews. Hog Farm, at 452, scored for a featured article, four good articles and a number of reviews. Le Panini, another newcomer to the WikiCup, scored 438 for a featured article and three good articles. Lee Vilenski, last year's champion, scored 332 points, from a featured article and various other sport-related topics. These contestants, like all the others, now have to start again from scratch. In Round 1, contestants achieved eight featured articles, three featured lists and one featured picture, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. They completed 97 good article reviews, nearly double the 52 good articles they claimed. Contestants also claimed for 135 featured article and featured list candidate reviews. There is no longer a requirement to mention your WikiCup participation when undertaking these reviews. Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article candidate, a featured process, or something else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:27, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 May newsletter

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The second round of the 2021 WikiCup has now finished; it was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 61 points to advance to Round 3. There were some impressive efforts in the round, with the top eight contestants all scoring more than 400 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 110 good articles achieved in total by contestants, as well as the 216 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures. Our top scorers in Round 2 were: The Rambling Man, with 2963 points from three featured articles, 20 featured article reviews, 37 good articles, 73 good article reviews, as well as 22 DYKs. Epicgenius, with 1718 points from one featured article, 29 good articles, 16 DYKs and plenty of bonus points. Bloom6132, with 990 points from 13 DYKs and 64 "In the news" items, mostly recent deaths. Hog Farm, with 834 points from two featured articles, five good articles, 14 featured article reviews and 15 good article reviews. Gog the Mild, with 524 points from two featured articles and four featured article reviews. Lee Vilenski, with 501 points from one featured article, three good articles, six featured article reviews and 25 good article reviews. Sammi Brie, with 485 points from four good articles, eight good article reviews and 27 DYKs, on US radio and television stations. Ktin, with 436 points from four good articles, seven DYKs and 11 "In the news" items. Please remember that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of Round 2 but before the start of Round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in Round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (except for at the end of each round, when you must claim them before the cut-off date/time). When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:28, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

47th issue of Hurricane Herald newsletter

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Volume XLVII, Issue 47, May 1, 2021 ←(Previous issues) 44 · 45 · 46 · 47 · 48 → The Hurricane Herald 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 Here are some tasks you can do: Requests: The rest of intensity lists, Pacific typhoon seasons from 1902 to 1938, Australian region cyclone seasons from 1963 to 1970, South Pacific cyclone seasons from 1958 to 1969, Tropical cyclones between 1978 and the newest article, 1870 Straits of Florida hurricane, Hurricanes in Mexico, Tropical cyclone effects by region, Typhoon Trix (1952) more... Citation needed: Make sure articles such as Pacific hurricane and Tropical cyclones in year articles are cited properly. (LightandDark2000 has provided a tutorial for citing sources in his opinion piece.) Cleanup: Tropical cyclones in India, Tropical cyclones in Myanmar, Tropical cyclones in Sri Lanka, List of Texas hurricanes (pre-1900), Typhoon Faxai and other storms in 2019 Pacific typhoon season (and the season article itself), 2020 Pacific typhoon season Expand: Newer tropical cyclone intensity list articles, Seasonal summaries and global condition sections for nearly every tropical cyclones by year articles, Pacific hurricane season timelines and earlier season articles in 1950s, 1941/1942/1943/1944 Pacific typhoon seasons, Tropical cyclones in Indonesia, most of the List of named storms articles, and most of the WPAC Storm articles created in August and September 2020 Stubs: 1876 Bengal cyclone, 1971 Odisha cyclone, 1978 Sri Lanka cyclone, Typhoon Kathleen (1947), 1900s/1910s/1920s/1930s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons, 1900s/1920s/1930s Australian region cyclone seasons, more... 2018 Global FT push: some goals for the 2018 Global FT include the creation or improvement of many other articles listed in the first section on the WPTC talk page. Also, please join our task force! Storms of the month over the last year Month Storm April 2021 Cyclone Seroja March 2021 Cyclone Niran February 2021 Cyclone Guambe January 2021 Cyclone Eloise Storm of the Year 2020 Hurricane Eta December 2020 Cyclone Yasa November 2020 Hurricane Iota October 2020 Typhoon Goni (2020) September 2020 Cyclone Ianos August 2020 Hurricane Laura July 2020 Hurricane Isaias June 2020 Tropical Storm Cristobal (2020) May 2020 Cyclone Amphan Storms of the month and other tropical activity for March and April SoTM for March – Cyclone Niran Cyclone Niran originated from a developing tropical low off the coast of Queensland on February 27. Afterward, the system slowly began to strengthen, while making a slow clockwise loop, bringing heavy flooding to parts of Queensland. On March 1, the system strengthened into a Category 1 tropical cyclone on the Australian region basin scale, and was given the name Niran by the BoM. On March 3, Niran began to undergo rapid intensification as it began accelerating away from the Australian coast, towards the southeast. On March 5, Niran crossed over into the FMS's area of responsibility, in the South Pacific basin. Soon afterward, the cyclone reached its peak intensity as a Category 5 tropical cyclone on both the Australian region scale and the Saffir–Simpson scale (SSHWS), with maximum 10-minute sustained winds of 205 km/h (125 mph), maximum 1-minute sustained winds of 260 km/h (160 mph), and a central minimum pressure of 931 millibars (27.5 inHg). Several hours later, Niran underwent an eyewall replacement cycle and encountered wind shear, which caused the storm to begin weakening. The storm continued moving towards the southeast at a rapid pace, and on March 6, the storm struck the island of Grande Terre in New Caledonia, as a Category 3-equivalent tropical cyclone on the SSHWS, although the storm's eye stayed offshore. On March 6, Niran transitioned into an extratropical cyclone, and two days later, Niran was absorbed into another larger extratropical storm to the south. Niran caused at least $200 million (2021 USD) in damages, the vast majority of which came from banana crop damage in Queensland. No deaths were reported from the storm. SoTM for April – Cyclone Seroja On March 19, the BoM began monitoring a developing tropical low to the south of Timor, which they designated as 22U. On April 3, the system fully developed into a tropical low. For the next couple of days, the system made a slow counterclockwise loop over a part Indonesia and over Timor, gradually strengthening as it did so, causing torrential floods that killed at least 229 people. On April 4, the system strengthened into a Category 1 tropical cyclone on the Australian region scale and was named Seroja by TCWC Jakarta. On April 5, Seroja began moving southwestward, away from Indonesia. The storm encountered wind shear during this time, but the storm maintained tropical cyclone intensity. On April 7, Seroja began closely interacting with Tropical Low 23U to the northeast, which later became Cyclone Odette, as a result of the Fujiwhara effect. The two storms began closely interacting on April 8, as the two storms drew closer to each other. The interaction initially caused both storms to weaken, though Seroja eventually restrengthen and 23U strengthened into Tropical Cyclone Odette later that day. However, soon afterward, Seroja became the stronger storm and begen to absorb Odette into its circulation. On April 10, Seroja absorbed Odette, before turning to the southeast and strengthening again. The system continued stregthening up until landfall, and the system made landfall on April 12 near Gregory, Western Australia, at peak intensity, as a Category 3 severe tropical cyclone on the Australian region scale and a Category 1-equivalent tropical cyclone on the Saffir–Simpson scale. Afterward, Seroja weakened as it moved inland, and the system transitioned into an extratropical storm, before emerging into the Great Australian Bight. Later that day, Seroja was absorbed by a larger extratropical cyclone to the south. Seroja killed at least 229 people and left another 102 missing, making it the third-deadliest tropical cyclone recorded in the Australian region basin. The storm also caused over $490.7 million (2021 USD) in damages. Typhoon Surigae near peak intensity on April 17 Western Pacific – On March 14, a short-lived tropical depression formed near the Philippines, before dissipating later that day. On April 12, Typhoon Surigae, the fourth depression, second named storm, and first typhoon of the 2021 Pacific typhoon season, formed on April 12. It began a period of rapid intensification on April 16, undergoing a brief eyewall replacement cycle, and reaching its peak intensity on April 17, becoming the most intense typhoon to form in the month of April. At its peak, the storm had a minimum central pressure of 895 mbar (895.0 hPa; 26.43 inHg), maximum 10-minute sustained winds of 220 km/h (140 mph), and maximum 1-minute sustained winds of 305 km/h (190 mph), making the storm a powerful Category 5-equivalent super typhoon on the Saffir–Simpson scale (SSHWS). Afterward, the storm underwent two eyewall replacement cycles, after which the storm became annular by April 20, with a symmetrical shape and a large eye, while moving northwestward, off the coast of the Philippines. Afterward, the storm gradually began to weaken, and its structure began to degrade on April 22, as the system turned northeastward. Weakening accelerated after that, as the storm encountered more unfavorable conditions. Surigae transitioned into a subtropical storm on April 23, before becoming extratropical on the next day. On April 26, Surigae's extratropical remnant underwent explosive intensification as it accelerated northeastward, reaching an extratropical peak of 944 mbar (944.0 hPa; 27.88 inHg) on April 27, as a powerful hurricane-force extratropical cyclone. Afterward, Surigae's remnant gradually weakened, as it turned eastward. On April 30, Surigae's low-pressure center dissipated and was replaced by a new one later that day, marking a center reformation, with the new low-pressure center quickly dominating the storm. Afterward, Surigae's remnants moved into the Gulf of Alaska, before slowing down and turning to the northwest, while rapidly weakening. On May 2, the storm was absorbed into another extratropical cyclone near the Aleutian Islands, on May 2. Late on May 6, this storm was absorbed into yet another extratropical cyclone to the southeast, within the Gulf of Alaska. Surigae brought tropical storm-force winds to Micronesia and Palau and grazed the Philippines as a powerful storm, causing over $10.45 million in damages in U.S. dollars and running the cargo ship LCU Cebu Great Ocean aground, killing 10 people and leaving 8 others missing. North Indian Ocean – On April 2, Depression BOB 01, the first storm of the season, developed over the Andaman Sea. For the next couple of days, the storm slowly moved northward, towards Myanmar, before dissipating on the next day. Australian region – Cyclone Marian moved into the South-West Indian Ocean basin on March 1, before moving back into the Australian region basin on the next day. The storm gradually weakened while moving southeastward, before becoming an extratropical cyclone on March 9. Cyclone Niran, which had formed on February 27, peaked as a Category 5 severe tropical cyclone on March 5, before exiting the basin into the South Pacific basin soon afterward. The storm damaged many of the banana crops in Queensland, causing at least $180 million (2021 USD) in damages in Australia. During the remainder of the month of March, Tropical Lows 18U, 19U, 20U, and 21U formed, but each of those storms dissipated without ever having any significant impacts. On April 2, Tropical Low 23U formed around Indonesia, followed by Tropical Low 22U on April 3; these storms developed into Cyclones Odette and Seroja, respectively. 23U gradually moved southward, before interacting with Cyclone Seroja on April 8, and strengthened into Cyclone Odette later that day. However, the storm was gradually drawn into Seroja's circulation, and on April 10, Odette was absorbed into Seroja. Tropical Low 22U made a slow counterclockwise loop over Indonesia and over Timor from April 2 to 5, causing destructive flooding, and killing at least 229 people. The system strengthened into Tropical Cyclone Seroja on April 4. On April 5, Seroja began to leave Indonesia and moved southwestward. From April 8 to 10, Seroja interacted with the nearby Cyclone Odette, before absorbing the latter on April 10, and turning southeastward. Soon afterward, Seroja strengthened further into a Category 1-equivalent tropical cyclone, strengthening all the way until its landfall near Gregory, Western Australia on April 11. The system became extratropical on April 12 and re-emerged over open water, before being absorbed into another extratropical cyclone later that day. On April 9, a short-lived tropical low formed, before dissipating later that day. On April 23, yet another short-lived tropical low developed, before dissipating on the next day. This was the last storm of the season. The season officially ended on April 30. South-West Indian Ocean – On March 1, Cyclone Marian briefly entered the basin. During that time, MFR decided to defer advisories to the BoM, as the cyclone was expected to re-enter the Australian Region within a short period of time. On March 2, it exited the South-West Indian Ocean basin. The same day, the precursor to Cyclone Habana formed as well as an invest which would become Cyclone Iman. Habana was named 2 days later, and Iman was named on March 7. Cyclone Habana stayed out to sea and did not cause any known damage or deaths. It was quite long lived, spanning 2 weeks and reaching Intense Tropical Cyclone (and Category 4-equivalent) intensity. On the other hand, Cyclone Iman made landfall in Madagascar and Réunion, causing moderate rainfall in the former country and flash floods and heavy winds in the latter. Tropical Depression 15, a brief storm, also formed in late March. After a period of inactivity, Moderate Tropical Storm Jobo was named on April 20. For the next several days, the storm tracked westward, before weakening into a remnant low on April 24 and making landfall on Tanzania shortly afterward. The storm dissipated later that day. On April 30, the season ended for most of the basin, except for the region around Mauritius and Seychelles, for which the season will end on May 15. South Pacific – On March 5, Tropical Depression 11F formed to the southeast of Port Vila, Vanuatu, before dissipating on the next day. On March 5, Cyclone Niran also entered the basin from the Australian region basin, as a Category 5 severe tropical cyclone. The storm gradually weakened as it quickly moved to the southeast, before striking the island of Grande Terre in New Caledonia as a Category 3-equivalent tropical cyclone on March 6. Afterward, the storm raced off towards the southeast and became extratropical later that day, before dissipating on March 8. Niran did at least $20 million in damages in New Caledonia, bringing the storm's damage total to at least $200 million. The storm did not have any reported deaths. On April 9, a tropical low entered the basin from the Australian region basin, which became Tropical Depression 13F. For the next couple of days, the system moved southeastward, making landfall on New Caledonia in the process, and strengthening after it moved back over open waters. However, the system rapidly weakened on April 11 and dissipated later that day. On April 24, the JTWC began monitoring a subtropical system in the eastern part of the basin, which they classified as Subtropical Cyclone 96P. The system was short-lived, as it dissipated late on the next day. No more storms developed in the basin that month. On April 30, the season officially ended. South Atlantic – According to the Brazilian Navy, an extratropical system transitioned into a subtropical depression on April 19. On April 20, the system strengthened into a subtropical storm and was named Potira. The system slowly moved towards the southeast, before dissipating on April 25. 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 More information can be found here. This list lists members who have joined/rejoined the WikiProject since the release of the last issue. Sorted chronologically. ‎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. 250 featured pages: 91.2% complete 200 featured articles: 79.5% complete 1500 good articles: 73.1% complete 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). 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). 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. 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". 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. 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. 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". 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". 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: 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 🌀 Write the next issue of The Hurricane Herald →

WikiCup 2021 July newsletter

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The third round of the 2021 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 294 points, and our top six scorers all had over 600 points. They were: The Rambling Man, with 1825 points from 3 featured articles, 44 featured article reviews, 14 good articles, 30 good article reviews and 10 DYKs. In addition, he completed a 34-article good topic on the EFL Championship play-offs. Epicgenius, a New York specialist, with 1083 points from 2 featured article reviews, 18 good articles, 30 DYKs and plenty of bonus points. Bloom6132, with 869 points from 11 DYKs, all with bonus points, and 54 "In the news" items, mostly covering people who had recently died. Gog the Mild, with 817 points from 3 featured articles on historic battles in Europe, 5 featured article reviews and 3 good articles. Hog Farm, with 659 points from 2 featured articles and 2 good articles on American Civil War battles, 18 featured article reviews, 2 good articles, 6 good article reviews and 4 DYKs. BennyOnTheLoose, a snooker specialist and new to the Cup, with 647 points from a featured article, 2 featured article reviews, 6 good articles, 6 good article reviews and 3 DYKs. In round three, contestants achieved 19 featured articles, 7 featured lists, 106 featured article reviews, 72 good articles, 1 good topic, 62 good article reviews, 165 DYKs and 96 ITN items. We enter the fourth round with scores reset to zero; any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (one contestant in round 3 lost out because of this). When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 September newsletter

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The fourth round of the competition has finished with over 500 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants, The Rambling Man and Epicgenius, each scoring over 3000 points, and six contestants scoring over 1000. All but one of the finalists achieved one or more FAs during the round, the exception being Bloom6132 who demonstrated that 61 "in the news" items produces an impressive number of points. Other contestants who made it to the final are Gog the Mild, Lee Vilenski, BennyOnTheLoose, Amakuru and Hog Farm. However, all their points are now swept away and everyone starts afresh in the final round. Round 4 saw the achievement of 18 featured articles and 157 good articles. Bilorv scored for a 25-article good topic on Black Mirror but narrowly missed out on qualifying for the final round. There was enthusiasm for FARs, with 89 being performed, and there were 63 GARs and around 100 DYKs during the round. As we start round 5, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it to the final round; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For other contestants, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:02, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

48th issue of Hurricane Herald newsletter

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Volume XLVII, Issue 48, September 4, 2021 ←(Previous issues) 45 · 46 · 47 · 48 · 49 → The Hurricane Herald: 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics Special Edition! The Hurricane Herald is the semi-regular newsletter of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones. The newsletter aims to provide in summary the recent activities and developments of the WikiProject, in addition to global tropical cyclone activity. The Hurricane Herald has been running since its first edition ran on June 4, 2006. If you wish to receive or discontinue 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 Here are some tasks you can do: Requests: The rest of the tropical cyclone intensity lists, Pacific typhoon seasons from 1902 to 1938, Australian region cyclone seasons from 1963 to 1970, South Pacific cyclone seasons from 1958 to 1969, Tropical cyclones between 1978 and the newest article, 1870 Straits of Florida hurricane, Hurricanes in Mexico, Tropical cyclone effects by region, Typhoon Trix (1952), more... Citation needed: Make sure articles such as Pacific hurricane and Tropical cyclones in year articles are cited properly. Clean up: Tropical cyclones in India, Tropical cyclones in Myanmar, Tropical cyclones in Sri Lanka, List of Texas hurricanes (pre-1900), Typhoon Faxai and other storms in 2019 Pacific typhoon season (and the season article itself), 2020 Pacific typhoon season Expand: List of depressions and deep depressions in the North Indian Ocean, List of South-West Indian Ocean tropical cyclones, Seasonal summaries and global condition sections for nearly every tropical cyclones by year articles, Pacific hurricane season timelines and earlier season articles in 1950s, 1941/1942/1943/1944 Pacific typhoon seasons, most of the List of named storms articles, Tropical Storm Fay (2008) Stubs: 1876 Bengal cyclone, 1971 Odisha cyclone, 1978 Sri Lanka cyclone, Typhoon Kathleen (1947), 1900s/1910s/1920s/1930s North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons, 1900s/1920s/1930s Australian region cyclone seasons, more... 2018 Global FT push: some goals for the 2018 Global FT include the creation or improvement of many other articles listed in the first section on the WPTC talk page. Also, please join our task force! Current assessment table As of this issue, there are 161 featured articles and 80 featured lists. There are 3 A-class articles, and 1123 good articles. There are only 169 B-class articles, perhaps because because most articles of that quality already passed a GA review. There are 660 C-class articles, 803 start-class articles, and 137 stub-class articles, with 1126 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. 250 featured pages: 96.4% complete 200 featured articles: 80.5% complete 1500 good or better articles: 91.1% complete All articles to C-class or better: 70% complete Storms of the month over the last year Month Storm August 2021 Hurricane Ida July 2021 Typhoon In-fa June 2021 Tropical Storm Claudette (2021) May 2021 Cyclone Tauktae April 2021 Cyclone Seroja March 2021 Cyclone Niran February 2021 Cyclone Guambe January 2021 Cyclone Eloise Storm of the Year 2020 Hurricane Eta December 2020 Cyclone Yasa November 2020 Hurricane Iota October 2020 Typhoon Goni (2020) September 2020 Cyclone Ianos August 2020 Hurricane Laura Storm of the month and other tropical activity for May, June, July, and August SoTM for May: Cyclone Tauktae Tauktae originated from a tropical disturbance, which was first monitored by the India Meteorological Department on May 13. The disturbance drifted eastward and organized into a deep depression by May 14. The storm soon took a northward turn, continuing to gradually intensify, and the system strengthened into a cyclonic storm and was named Tauktae later that same day. Tauktae continued intensifying into May 15, reaching severe cyclonic storm status later that day. Tauktae began to parallel the coast of the Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra, before rapidly intensifying into a very severe cyclonic storm, early on May 16. Early on May 17, Tauktae intensified into an extremely severe cyclonic storm, reaching its peak intensity soon afterward. Later that same day, Tauktae underwent an eyewall replacement cycle and weakened, before restrengthening as it neared the coast of Gujarat, making landfall soon afterward. After making landfall, Tauktae gradually weakened as it turned northeastward, moving further inland. On May 19, Tauktae weakened into a well-marked low-pressure area. Tauktae brought heavy rainfall and flash floods to areas along the coast of Kerala and on Lakshadweep. There were reports of heavy rain in the states of Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra as well. Tauktae resulted in at least 169 deaths in India, and left another 81 people missing. There were also 5 deaths reported in Pakistan. The storm displaced over 200,000 people in Gujarat. The cyclone also caused widespread infrastructure and agricultural damage to the western coast of India. SoTM for June: Tropical Storm Claudette (2021) Claudette originated from a broad trough of low pressure over the Bay of Campeche on June 12, which moved erratically over the region for the next several days. Moving northward with little development due to unfavorable upper-level winds and land interaction, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) initiated advisories on it as a Potential Tropical Cyclone late on June 17, due to its imminent threat to land. The disturbance finally organized into Tropical Storm Claudette at 09:00 UTC on June 19 as it was over southeast Louisiana. Claudette weakened to a depression as it turned east-northeastward before moving through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Baroclinic forcing then caused Claudette to reintensify into a tropical storm over North Carolina early on June 21 before it accelerated into the Atlantic Ocean later that day. Soon afterward, it degenerated into a low-pressure trough on the same day, before being absorbed into another extratropical cyclone on the next day. Claudette produced gusty winds, flash flooding, and tornadoes across much of the Southeastern United States. Claudette overall caused minor impacts along the Gulf of Campeche’s coastline due to the system stalling in the region as an Invest and a Potential Tropical Cyclone. Impacts were most severe in Alabama and Mississippi, where heavy rains caused flash flooding. Several tornadoes in the states also caused severe damage, including an EF2 tornado that damaged a school and destroyed parts of a mobile home park in East Brewton, Alabama, injuring 20 people. At least 14 people died in Alabama due to the storm. Total economic losses across the United States exceeded $350 million. SoTM for July: Typhoon In-fa In-fa was first noted by the JTWC as an area of low pressure, located east of the Philippines on July 14. Favorable conditions helped the storm to intensify, becoming a tropical depression, two days later and a tropical storm on July 17, being assigned the name In-fa by the Japan Meteorological Agency. Located in a weak steering environment, the system struggled to organize under dry air and moderate wind shear before organizing further. It continued to move mostly westward, strengthening into a typhoon and deepening quickly. The storm struggled to organize itself significantly due to continuous dry air intrusions and its frequent motion changes. On July 21, it reached its peak intensity, with maximum 1-minute sustained winds of 175 km/h (110 mph), and 10-minute sustained winds of 150 km/h (90 mph) on the system. Nevertheless, the system reached its minimum barometric pressure of 950 hPa (28.05 inHg), three days later, after passing through the Ryukyu Islands. As it entered the East China Sea, marginal conditions started to take their toll on the system, with In-fa weakening steadily and slowly, until it made its consecutive landfalls over Putuo District of Zhoushan and Pinghu on July 25 and 26, respectively, as a tropical storm. For the next couple of days, the storm slowly moved inland while gradually weakening, before turning northward on July 29. Later that day, In-fa weakened into a remnant low over northern China. The remnants continued their northward trek for another couple of days, before dissipating near North Korea on July 31. Typhoon In-fa exacerbated and played a part in starting the 2021 Henan floods, a flooding event that killed at least 302 people and dealt upwards of 82 billion yuan (US$12.7 billion) in damage, while leaving at least 50 people missing. The typhoon itself killed 6 people and caused at least $2 billion in damages. North Atlantic – The NHC started issuing tropical weather outlooks on May 15, before the Atlantic's first system, Tropical Storm Ana, formed on May 22. This continued the trend of systems forming, before the official start of the season on June 1, for the seventh year in a row. During June, three tropical cyclones developed in the basin: Tropical Storms Bill, Claudette, and Danny. Bill remained off the East Coast of the United States and had limited impacts. Claudette was designated as Potential Tropical Cyclone Three and organized into a tropical storm at landfall. The system subsequently moved through the Southeastern United States. Danny was a short-lived tropical storm that made landfall in South Carolina, before dissipating on the next day. On July 1, Hurricane Elsa developed east of the Lesser Antilles and rapidly intensified into a Category 1 hurricane in the Caribbean; however, due to the storm's rapid forward motion and wind shear, Elsa weakened back into a tropical storm. It passed just north of Jamaica and made landfall on Cuba, before emerging into the Gulf of Mexico. Elsa briefly regained Category 1 hurricane intensity, before weakening back into a tropical storm and making landfall on Florida on July 8. The storm moved up the East Coast of the US, becoming extratropical on July 9 and dissipating on July 14. In August, six tropical cyclones developed: Tropical Storm Fred, Hurricanes Grace, Henri, and Ida, Tropical Storms Kate and Julian (Kate was named later), and Hurricane Larry. Fred developed on August 11. The system impacted Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Cuba, before degenerating back into a tropical wave on August 14. On August 15, Fred regenerated into a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico, before making landfall on the Florida Panhandle on August 16. The storm weakened into a remnant low on August 18, while moving through the Eastern United States, before dissipating on August 20. Hurricane Grace developed on August 13. The system took a westward track and affected much of the Caribbean, before strengthening into a Category 1 hurricane and making landfall on the Yucatán Peninsula on August 19. Afterward, Grace rapidly intensified in the Gulf of Mexico, before making landfall on Veracruz as a Category 3 major hurricane. Grace rapidly weakened afterward, degenerating into a remnant disturbance on August 21. Grace's remnants would later cross into the East Pacific and redevelop into Tropical Storm Marty. Henri developed to the east of Bermuda on August 16. The system made a slow counterclockwise loop off the East Coast of the US, before turning northward and developing into a Category 1 hurricane on August 21. On the next day, Henri weakened back into a tropical storm and made landfall on Rhode Island, before proceeding to make a slow westward loop over New England for a day, causing widespread flooding across the region. Henri subsequently turned eastward and weakened into a remnant low, before dissipating on August 24. On August 26, Hurricane Ida developed in the Caribbean. The system intensified into a Category 1 hurricane on August 27, before making landfall on western Cuba and emerging into the Gulf of Mexico. Subsequently, Ida began to undergo rapid intensification, as it moved northeastward. Ida peaked as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on August 29, with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (240 km/h) and a minimum central pressure of 929 millibars (27.4 inHg), making landfall in Louisiana at a similar intensity, becoming one of the most powerful hurricanes recorded making landfall on the state. Ida became extratropical on September 1, subsequently causing historic flooding and a tornado outbreak in the Northeastern United States. On September 3, Ida stalled in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, before being absorbed into a developing low on the next day. The current death toll is at 71, and the damage total is estimated to exceed $50 billion (2021 USD), making Ida the sixth-costliest tropical cyclone on record. On August 28, Tropical Storm Kate developed over the Tropical Atlantic and proceeded to move northward. On the next day, Julian developed and tracked in a similar direction. On August 31, Hurricane Larry developed over the Tropical Atlantic, becoming a Category 3 major hurricane on September 2. East Pacific – The East Pacific hurricane season officially started on May 15. The NHC issued its first advisory of the year on the first tropical system, Tropical Storm Andres, on May 9. Andres broke the record for the earliest named storm formation on record, beating 2017's Tropical Storm Adrian by about a day. Tropical Storm Blanca developed near the end of that month and remained offshore. Tropical Storm Carlos originated as a tropical disturbance near southern Mexico on June 2, though the system failed to coalesce into a tropical cyclone until June 12. The second half of the month saw the formation of Tropical Storm Dolores and Hurricane Enrique. Dolores made landfall in southwestern Mexico as a high-end tropical storm, while Enrique paralleled the southwestern coast of Mexico, before dissipating over the southern Baja California Peninsula. July saw the development of four systems: Hurricane Felicia, Tropical Storm Guillermo, Hurricane Hilda, and Tropical Storm Jimena. Felicia developed into a powerful Category 4 annular hurricane, and peaked with maximum sustained winds of 125 kn (145 mph; 230 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 947 mbar (27.96 inHg). Guillermo and Hilda both remained offshore, with very little impacts. Jimena developed on August 30, and remained at sea. In August, five tropical cyclones developed in the basin, including: Tropical Storms Ignacio and Kevin, Hurricane Linda, Tropical Storm Marty, and Hurricane Nora. Both Ignacio and Kevin remained offshore and had minimal impacts. Hurricane Linda developed into a Category 4 hurricane and was a long-lived annular hurricane, peaking with maximum sustained winds of 115 kn (130 mph; 215 km/h) and minimum pressure of 950 mb (28.05 inHg). Linda gradually weakened as it moved westward, entering the Central Pacific on August 20 and becoming post-tropical shortly afterward. On August 21, the remnants of Hurricane Grace from the North Atlantic entered the basin, before regenerating into Tropical Storm Marty on August 23. Marty dissipated shortly afterward. On August 25, Nora developed to the south of Mexico. The storm eventually developed into a hurricane on August 28 and paralleled the western coast of Mexico. Central Pacific – The Central Pacific hurricane season officially started on June 1. Hurricane Linda's post-tropical remnant entered the basin on August 20. On August 23, Linda's remnants struck Hawaii as a tropical storm-force low, before the remnants were last noted on the next day. West Pacific – On May 11, Tropical Depression 02W (Crising) to the southeast of the Philippines, marking the formation of the third system in the basin. Crising moved across the southern Philippines, before dissipating. This was followed by another unnamed tropical depression and Tropical Storm Choi-wan later that month; the latter affected the Philippines and Taiwan. In June, three systems developed: Tropical Storm Koguma, Typhoon Champi, and another unnamed tropical depression. Koguma affected Hainan and northern Vietnam, while Champi passed to the east of Japan. Activity picked up in July, with 12 tropical cyclones developing, including: Tropical Depressions 07W (Emong) and 08W, Typhoon In-fa, Severe Tropical Storm Cempaka (known in China as "Typhoon Cempaka"), Tropical Storm Nepartak, and four other unnamed tropical depressions. Emong passed near southern Taiwan, before making landfall in China. 08W tracked through the Philippines, Hainan, and northern Vietnam, during its lifetime. Typhoon In-fa struck China in late July and slowly moved inland, exacerbating the already-devastating 2021 Henan floods. Cempaka slowly moved ashore in southern China and made a counterclockwise loop through southern China and the Gulf of Tonkin, before dissipating; Cempaka was classified as a typhoon at its peak intensity by both the China Meteorological Agency (CMA) and the JTWC. Napartak exhibited subtropical characteristics for most of its lifetime and made landfall in northern Japan. Activity continued into August, with six more tropical cyclones developing. These included an unnamed tropical depression, Tropical Depression 12W, and Tropical Storms Tropical Storm Lupit, Nida, Mirinae, and Omais. 12W developed on August 1; the system eventually dissipated on August 6, near southern Japan. Lupit affected a large swath of areas, from southern China, to Taiwan, to Japan, before eventually dissipating. Nida developed to the east of Japan and remained offshore, before becoming extratropical on August 8. The storm's remnants accelerated northeastward, eventually making landfall on Alaska on August 10. Mirinae developed to the east of Taiwan, and tracked close to the east coast of Japan, before becoming extratropical on August 10. The storm's remnants accelerated eastward across the Pacific, making landfall in western Canada on August 15. Omais developed near the International Date Line on August 10, and the system tracked westward. Omais became extratropical on August 24, but its remnants went on to affect South Korea, northern Japan, and part of the Russian Far East, before dissipating. Despite the burst of storm formation in July and August, activity in the West Pacific has been below-average, as of this writing. North Indian Ocean – The first cyclone of the year, Cyclone Tauktae, formed on May 14, and intensified into an Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm on the IMD scale, and a Category 4-equivalent tropical cyclone on the SSHWS scale. Tauktae made landfall in Gujarat on May 17, before dissipating two days later. The second cyclone of the season, Cyclone Yaas, formed on May 23, and made landfall along the Odisha coast on May 26, before dissipating on May 28. South-West Indian Ocean – On May 15, the South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season officially ended for the region around Mauritius and Seychelles. Australian region – On May 31, a tropical low, the last system of the season, formed to the west-northwest of the Cocos Islands. The tropical low continued moving southeastward, before it was last noted on June 3, bringing the 2020–21 tropical cyclone year to a close. South Atlantic tropical cyclone – On June 29, Subtropical Storm Roani developed to the southeast of Brazil, just outside of the Brazilian Navy's area of responsiblity; as such, the storm went unnamed at the time. On the next day, the system entered the Brazilian Navy's area of responsibility and was assigned the name Raoni. The storm soon peaked as a powerful subtropical cyclone, with a minimum central pressure of 986 millibars (29.1 inHg) and maximum 1-minute sustained winds of 50 mph (85 km/h), according to the Brazilian Navy, making Roani the most powerful tropical or subtropical cyclone in the South Atlantic since Hurricane Catarina in 2004. Roani took a northeastward track while gradually weakening, before degenerating into a remnant low on July 2. Roani's extratropical precursor brought powerful gusts and heavy rain to parts of Brazil. From June 24 to July 2, Raoni contributed to an unusually-strong cold wave across portions of South America, setting record low temperatures and bringing rare snowfall to parts of the region. 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 More information can be found here. This list lists members who have joined/rejoined the WikiProject since the release of the last issue. Sorted chronologically. Sleepinthestars (talk · contribs) SR.1111111 (talk · contribs) BiddybudBoy (talk · contribs) CycloneEditor (talk · contribs) TheGreatSpring (talk · contribs) (Has since gone inactive) Kayree kh (talk · contribs) Destroyeraa (talk · contribs) (Rejoined) SolarisPenguin (talk · contribs) SsSsSølarRadia -75 (talk · contribs) Nakosi (talk · contribs) Kritphon (talk · contribs) FreeWikiFrog (talk · contribs) Drdpw (talk · contribs) André L P Souza (talk · contribs) HurricaneIcy (talk · contribs) (Rejoined) Kellis7 (talk · contribs) 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) 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) Write the next issue of The Hurricane Herald →

LightandDark2000 🌀 (talk) 19:46, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup 2021 November newsletter

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The WikiCup is over for another year and the finalists can relax! Our Champion this year is The Rambling Man (submissions), who amassed over 5000 points in the final round, achieving 8 featured articles and almost 500 reviews. It was a very competitive round; seven of the finalists achieved over 1000 points in the round (enough to win the 2019 contest), and three scored over 3000 (enough to win the 2020 event). Our 2021 finalists and their scores were: The Rambling Man (submissions) with 5072 points Lee Vilenski (submissions) with 3276 points Amakuru (submissions) with 3197 points Epicgenius (submissions) with 1611 points Gog the Mild (submissions) with 1571 points BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 1420 points Hog Farm (submissions) with 1043 points Bloom6132 (submissions) with 528 points All those who reached the final round will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. Awards will be handed out in the next few days. The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for 8 FAs in round 5. Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 5. Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured topic prize, for 13 articles in a featured topic in round 5. Epicgenius (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 63 GAs in round 4. The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the good topic prize, for 86 articles in good topics in round 5. The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the reviewer prize, for 68 FAC reviews and 213 GAN reviews, both in round 5. Epicgenius (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 30 did you know articles in round 3 and 105 overall. Bloom6132 (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 71 in the news articles in round 1 and 284 overall. Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether they made it to the final round or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup, some of whom did very well. Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from the quality creations, expansions and improvements made, and the numerous reviews performed. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot. If you have views on whether the rules or scoring need adjustment for next year's contest, please comment on the WikiCup talk page. Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2022 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:56, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message

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Welcome to the 2022 WikiCup!

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Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:37, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2022 WikiCup!

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Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2022 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:02, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:AFC Helper News

Hello! I wanted to drop a quick note for all of our AFC participants; nothing huge and fancy like a newsletter, but a few points of interest.

• AFCH will now show live previews of the comment to be left on a decline.
• The template {{db-afc-move}} has been created - this template is similar to {{db-move}} when there is a redirect in the way of an acceptance, but specifically tells the patrolling admin to let you (the draft reviewer) take care of the actual move.

Short and sweet, but there's always more to discuss at WT:AFC. Stop on by, maybe review a draft on the way? Whether you're one of our top reviewers, or haven't reviewed in a while, I want to thank you for helping out in the past and in the future. Cheers, Primefac, via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 March newsletter

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And so ends the first round of the WikiCup. Last year anyone who scored more than zero points moved on to Round 2, but this was not the case this year, and a score of 13 or more was required to proceed. The top scorers in Round 1 were: Epicgenius, a finalist last year, who led the field with 1906 points, gained from 32 GAs and 19 DYKs, all on the topic of New York buildings. AryKun, new to the contest, was second with 1588 points, having achieved 2 FAs, 11 GAs and various other submissions, mostly on the subject of birds. Bloom6132, a WikiCup veteran, was in third place with 682 points, garnered from 51 In the news items and several DYKs. GhostRiver was close behind with 679 points, gained from achieving 12 GAs, mostly on ice hockey players, and 35 GARs. Kavyansh.Singh was in fifth place with 551 points, with an FA, a FL, and many reviews. SounderBruce was next with 454 points, gained from an FA and various other submissions, mostly on United States highways. Ktin, another WikiCup veteran, was in seventh place with 412 points, mostly gained from In the news items. These contestants, like all the others who qualified for Round 2, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews of a large number of good articles as the contest ran concurrently with a GAN backlog drive. Well done all! To qualify for Round 3, contestants will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two participants. Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Anything that should have been claimed for in Round 1 is no longer eligible for points. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:07, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 March newsletter

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And so ends the first round of the WikiCup. Last year anyone who scored more than zero points moved on to Round 2, but this was not the case this year, and a score of 13 or more was required to proceed. The top scorers in Round 1 were: Epicgenius, a finalist last year, who led the field with 1906 points, gained from 32 GAs and 19 DYKs, all on the topic of New York buildings. AryKun, new to the contest, was second with 1588 points, having achieved 2 FAs, 11 GAs and various other submissions, mostly on the subject of birds. Bloom6132, a WikiCup veteran, was in third place with 682 points, garnered from 51 In the news items and several DYKs. GhostRiver was close behind with 679 points, gained from achieving 12 GAs, mostly on ice hockey players, and 35 GARs. Kavyansh.Singh was in fifth place with 551 points, with an FA, a FL, and many reviews. SounderBruce was next with 454 points, gained from an FA and various other submissions, mostly on United States highways. Ktin, another WikiCup veteran, was in seventh place with 412 points, mostly gained from In the news items. These contestants, like all the others who qualified for Round 2, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. Between them, contestants completed reviews of a large number of good articles as the contest ran concurrently with a GAN backlog drive. Well done all! To qualify for Round 3, contestants will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two participants. Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Anything that should have been claimed for in Round 1 is no longer eligible for points. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:55, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 May newsletter

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The second round of the 2022 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 115 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top seven contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 11 featured articles and the 79 good articles achieved in total by contestants. Our top scorers in round 2 were: Epicgenius, with 1264 points from 2 featured article, 4 good articles and 18 DYKs. Epicgenius was a finalist last year but has now withdrawn from the contest as he pursues a new career path. AryKun, with 1172 points from two featured articles, one good article and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews. Bloom6132, with 605 points from 44 in the news items and 4 DYKs. Sammi Brie, with 573 points from 8 GAs and 21 DYKs. Ealdgyth, with 567 points from 11 GAs and 34 good and featured article reviews. Panini!, with 549 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and several other sources. Lee Vilenski, with 545 points from 1 FA, 4 GAs and a number of reviews. The rules for featured and good article reviews require the review to be of sufficient length; brief quick fails and very short reviews will generally not be awarded points. Remember also that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:39, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter May 2022

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} New Page Review queue March 2022 Hello Skarmory, At the time of the last newsletter (No.26, September 2021), the backlog was 'only' just over 6,000 articles. In the past six months, the backlog has reached nearly 16,000, a staggering level not seen in several years. A very small number of users had been doing the vast majority of the reviews. Due to "burn-out", we have recently lost most of this effort. Furthermore, several reviewers have been stripped of the user right for abuse of privilege and the articles they patrolled were put back in the queue. Several discussions on the state of the process have taken place on the talk page, but there has been no action to make any changes. The project also lacks coordination since the "position" is vacant. In the last 30 days, only 100 reviewers have made more than 8 patrols and only 50 have averaged one review a day. There are currently 806 New Page Reviewers, but about a third have not had any activity in the past month. All 851 administrators have this permission, but only about a dozen significantly contribute to NPP. This means we have an active pool of about 450 to address the backlog. We cannot rely on a few to do most of the work as that inevitably leads to burnout. A fairly experienced reviewer can usually do a review in a few minutes. If every active reviewer would patrol just one article per day, the backlog would very quickly disappear. If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, do suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page. If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent 05:18, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter June 2022

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WikiCup 2022 July newsletter

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The third round of the 2022 WikiCup has now come to an end. Each of the sixteen contestants who made it into the fourth round had at least 180 points, which is a lower figure than last year when 294 points were needed to progress to round 4. Our top scorers in round 3 were: BennyOnTheLoose, with 746 points, a tally built both on snooker and other sports topics, and on more general subjects. Bloom6132, with 683 points, garnered mostly from "In the news" items and related DYKs. Sammi Brie, with 527, from a variety of submissions related to radio and television stations. Between them contestants achieved 5 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 51 good articles, 149 DYK entries, 68 ITN entries, and 109 good article reviews. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article nomination, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. WikiCup judges: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:51, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter August 2022

New Page Review queue August 2022

Hello Skarmory,

Backlog status

After the last newsletter (No.28, June 2022), the backlog declined another 1,000 to 13,000 in the last week of June. Then the July backlog drive began, during which 9,900 articles were reviewed and the backlog fell by 4,500 to just under 8,500 (these numbers illustrate how many new articles regularly flow into the queue). Thanks go to the coordinators Buidhe and Zippybonzo, as well as all the nearly 100 participants. Congratulations to Dr vulpes who led with 880 points. See this page for further details.

Unfortunately, most of the decline happened in the first half of the month, and the backlog has already risen to 9,600. Understandably, it seems many backlog drive participants are taking a break from reviewing and unfortunately, we are not even keeping up with the inflow let alone driving it lower. We need the other 600 reviewers to do more! Please try to do at least one a day.

Coordination

MB and Novem Linguae have taken on some of the coordination tasks. Please let them know if you are interested in helping out. MPGuy2824 will be handling recognition, and will be retroactively awarding the annual barnstars that have not been issued for a few years.

Open letter to the WMF

The Page Curation software needs urgent attention. There are dozens of bug fixes and enhancements that are stalled (listed at Suggested improvements). We have written a letter to be sent to the WMF and we encourage as many patrollers as possible to sign it here. We are also in negotiation with the Board of Trustees to press for assistance. Better software will make the active reviewers we have more productive.

TIP - Reviewing by subject

Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages by their most familiar subjects can do so from the regularly updated sorted topic list.

New reviewers

The NPP School is being underused. The learning curve for NPP is quite steep, but a detailed and easy-to-read tutorial exists, and the Curation Tool's many features are fully described and illustrated on the updated page here.

Reminders

• Consider staying informed on project issues by putting the project discussion page on your watchlist.
• If you have noticed a user with a good understanding of Wikipedia notability and deletion, suggest they help the effort by placing {{subst:NPR invite}} on their talk page.
• If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process and its software.
• To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:25, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

WikiCup 2022 September newsletter

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The fourth round of the WikiCup has now finished. 383 points were required to reach the final, and the new round has got off to a flying start with all finalists already scoring. In round 4, Bloom6132 with 939 points was the highest points-scorer, with a combination of DYKs and In the news items, followed by BennyOnTheLoose, Sammi Brie and Lee Vilenski. The points of all contestants are swept away as we start afresh for the final round. At this stage, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. For the remaining competitors, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them, and importantly, before the deadline on October 31st! If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. The judges are Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:44, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022

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Hello Skarmory, Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section. Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also. Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved. NPP backlog May – October 15, 2022 Suggestions: There is much enthusiasm over the low backlog, but remember that the "quality and depth of patrolling are more important than speed". Reminder: an article should not be tagged for any kind of deletion for a minimum of 15 minutes after creation and it is often appropriate to wait an hour or more. (from the NPP tutorial) Reviewers should focus their effort where it can do the most good, reviewing articles. Other clean-up tasks that don't require advanced permissions can be left to other editors that routinely improve articles in these ways (creating Talk Pages, specifying projects and ratings, adding categories, etc.) Let's rely on others when it makes the most sense. On the other hand, if you enjoy doing these tasks while reviewing and it keeps you engaged with NPP (or are guiding a newcomer), then by all means continue. This user script puts a link to the feed in your top toolbar. Backlog: Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate! Reminders Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter. If you're interested in instant messaging and chat rooms, please join us on the New Page Patrol Discord, where you can ask for help and live chat with other patrollers. Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist. If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM. To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

WikiCup 2022 November newsletter

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The 2022 WikiCup has drawn to a close with the final round going down to the wire. The 2022 champion is Lee Vilenski (1752 points), who won in 2020 and was runner up in both 2019 and last year. In the final round he achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on cue sports. He was closely followed by Bloom6132 (1732), who specialised in "In the news" items and DYKs, and who has reached the final round of the Cup for the past three years. Next was BennyOnTheLoose (1238), another cue sports enthusiast, also interested in songs, followed by Muboshgu (1082), an "In the news" contributor, a seasoned contestant who first took part in the Cup ten years ago. Other finalists were Sammi Brie (930), who scored with a featured article, good articles and DYKs on TV and radio stations, Kavyansh.Singh (370), who created various articles on famous Americans, including an FA on Louis H. Bean, famed for his prediction of election outcomes. Next was PCN02WPS (292), who scored with good articles and DYKs on sporting and other topics and Z1720 (25) who had DYKs on various topics including historic Canadians. During the WikiCup, contestants achieved 37 featured articles, 349 good articles, 360 featured article reviews, 683 good article reviews and 480 In the news items, so Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors. Well done everyone! All those who reached the final round will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation and review. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or the overall leader in this field. Lee Vilenski wins the featured article prize, for a total of 6 FAs during the course of the competition and 3 in the final round. Kavyansh.Singh wins the featured list prize, for 3 FLs in round 2. Adam Cuerden wins the featured picture prize, for 39 FPs during the competition. Z1720 wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 35 FARs in round 4. Epicgenius wins the good article prize, for 32 GAs in round 1. SounderBruce wins the featured topic prize, for 4 FT articles in round 1. Lee Vilenski wins the good topic prize, for 34 GT articles in round 5. Sammi Brie wins the good article reviewer prize, for 71 GARs overall. Sammi Brie wins the Did you know prize, for 30 DYKs in round 3 and 106 overall. Bloom6132 wins the In the news prize, for 106 ITNs in round 5 and 289 overall. Next year's competition will begin on 1 January and possible changes to the rules and scoring are being discussed on the discussion page. You are invited to sign up to take part in the contest; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to have a good turnout for the 2023 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners and finalists, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:28, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

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Welcome to the 2023 WikiCup!

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Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2023 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:16, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

WikiCup 2023 March newsletter

{{collapse|So ends the first round of the 2023 WikiCup. Everyone with a positive score moved on to Round 2, with 54 contestants qualifying. The top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Unlimitedlead with 1205 points, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with two featured articles on historical figures and several featured article candidate reviews.
• Epicgenius was in second place with 789 points; a seasoned WikiCup competitor he specialises in buildings and locations in New York.
• FrB.TG was in third place with 625 points, garnered from a featured article on a filmmaker which qualified for an impressive number of bonus points.
• TheJoebro64, another WikiCup newcomer, came next with 600 points gained from two featured articles on video games.
• Iazyges was in fifth place with 532 points, from two featured articles on classical history.

The top sixteen contestants at the end of Round 1 had all scored over 300 points; these included LunaEatsTuna, Thebiguglyalien, Sammi Brie, Trainsandotherthings, Lee Vilenski, Juxlos, Unexpectedlydian, SounderBruce, Kosack, BennyOnTheLoose and PCN02WPS. It was a high-scoring start to the competition.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start again from scratch. The first round finished on February 26. Remember that any content promoted after that date but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:37, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

WikiCup 2023 May newsletter

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The second round of the 2023 WikiCup has now finished. Contestants needed to have scored 60 points to advance into round 3. Our top five scorers in round 2 all included a featured article among their submissions and each scored over 500 points. They were: Iazyges (1040) with three FAs on Byzantine emperors, and lots of bonus points. Unlimitedlead (847), with three FAs on ancient history, one GA and nine reviews. Epicgenius (636), a WikiCup veteran, with one FA on the New Amsterdam Theatre, four GAs and eleven DYKs BennyOnTheLoose (553), a seasoned competitor, with one FA on snooker, six GAs and seven reviews. FrB.TG (525), with one FA, a Lady Gaga song and a mass of bonus points. Other notable performances were put in by Sammi Brie, Thebiguglyalien, MyCatIsAChonk, PCN02WPS, and AirshipJungleman29. So far contestants have achieved thirteen featured articles between them, one being a joint effort, and forty-nine good articles. The judges are pleased with the thorough reviews that are being performed, and have hardly had to reject any. As we enter the third round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed in round 3. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:15, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023

Hello Skarmory,

New Page Review queue December 2022

Backlog

The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.

2022 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.

Reminders

• Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
• There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
• Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
• If you no longer wish to be a reviewer, please ask any admin to remove you from the group. If you want the tools back again, just ask at PERM.
• To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

NPP July 2022 backlog drive is on!

New Page Patrol | July 2022 Backlog Drive
On 1 July, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 20:26, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

NPP message

Hi Skarmory,

Invitation

For those who may have missed it in our last newsletter, here's a quick reminder to see the letter we have drafted, and if you support it, do please go ahead and sign it. If you already signed, thanks. Also, if you haven't noticed, the backlog has been trending up lately; all reviews are greatly appreciated.

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:11, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Board of Trustees election

Thank you for supporting the NPP initiative to improve WMF support of the Page Curation tools. Another way you can help is by voting in the Board of Trustees election. The next Board composition might be giving attention to software development. The election closes on 6 September at 23:59 UTC. View candidate statement videos and Vote Here. MB 04:07, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

October 2022 New Pages Patrol backlog drive

New Page Patrol | October 2022 backlog drive
On 1 October, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive. Barnstars will also be awarded for re-reviewing articles. Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive. Sign up here!
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 21:17, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

October 2022 New Pages Patrol backlog drive is on!

You are receiving this message because you signed up to participate in the drive, but have not yet reviewed any pages in October. We would love to see you over at the backlog drive! Buidhe 10:49, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Early end of the backlog drive

A few days ago, new page patrollers got the backlog to zero. Due to the unprecedented success of the backlog drive, it will be ending early—at the end of 24 October, or in approximately two hours.

Barnstars will be awarded as soon as the coords can tally the results. Streak awards will be allocated based on the first three weeks of the drive, with the last three days being counted as part of week three.

Great work everyone! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:50, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

WikiProject Weather: Map Dot & Template/Infobox Colors

Dear project member, This message is being sent out to encourage new ideas and feedback on those proposed in regard to the colors debate for WikiProject Weather. For those who are unaware of what's been happening over the last year, I will give a brief summary. We have been discussing proposed changes to the colors of the dots on tropical cyclone maps and templates and infoboxes across the entire weather project in order to solve issues related to the limited contrast between colors for both normal vision as well as the various types of color blindness (MOS:ACCESS). We had partially implemented a proposal earlier this year, however, it was objected to by a number of people and additional issues were presented that made it evident this wasn't the optimal solution. We tried to come up with other solutions to address the issues related to color contrast, however, none of them gained traction and no consensus was generated.

We need your help and I encourage you to propose your own scale and give feedback on those already listed. Keep in mind that we are NOT making a decision on any individual proposal at this time. We are simply allowing people to make proposals and cultivate them given feedback from other project members. Please visit our project page for additional details. The proposal phase will close no later than December 31st at 23:59 UTC. Noah^Talk 02:44, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

New Page Patrol – May 2023 Backlog Drive

New Page Patrol | May 2023 Backlog Drive
On 1 May, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of redirects patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive. Article patrolling is not part of the drive. Sign up here! There is a possibility that the drive may not run if there are <20 registered participants. Participants will be notified if this is the case.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)