Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of tornadoes observed by mobile radars

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

List of tornadoes observed by mobile radars

The result was ‎ Withdrawn , rename / refocus instead. Fram (talk) 15:45, 25 June 2024 (UTC) [reply]

List of tornadoes observed by mobile radars (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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There doesn't seem to be anything that makes this grouping of tornadoes special, that they are also (among other means) observed by mobile radar is not a defining characteristic, and is in many cases sourced to the most basic sources (twitter/X, primary sources like NOAA). An article on Mobile radar observation of tornadoes seems to be a better idea, perhaps this can be moved and the list trimmed to the most notable instances only? But specifically as a list grouping this seems like a never-ending list of a non-defining characteristic of the tornadoes, which get observed by many methods. Fram (talk) 15:03, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Events, Geography, and Technology. Fram (talk) 15:03, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and Support renaming — As pointed out by Fram, the list should only have the most notable instances. That is actually sourced by a published paper by NOAA/OU ([1]), which is cited in the article. The authors specifically mention dozens of tornadoes have been observed by mobile radars. That said, only a handful (actually, roughly this current list) have been directly mentioned or directly published about. In that paper, several of the tornadoes on this list were directly called out, including with some of the max readings. In fact, that published study alluded to another study of 82 separate tornadoes measured by mobile radars (page 5), but yet, only 12 were directly named in the study. Those named ones are the most notable ones. As such, several of the tornadoes listed here have the mobile radar information mentioned elsewhere on Wikipedia (see 2013 El Reno tornado, 1999 Bridge Creek–Moore tornado, 2011 El Reno–Piedmont tornado, Tornadoes of 2009#June 5, 2024 Greenfield Tornado, Tornado records, ect…)

Secondly, the nominator claimed “the most basic sources” and called out Twitter (only used for tornadoes that occurred in the last month—directly published by the Doppler on Wheels account or a academically published meteorologists in the field of radars…i.e. meets WP:SPS very clearly (“Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications”)) and NOAA. However, the nominator stated inaccurately that NOAA was a “primary source” that is not the case. NOAA does not own the Doppler on Wheels (University of Illinois does) or RaXPol (University of Oklahoma does) and the NOAA publications listed here (example for this is this publication in 2016) are not primary sources for it. Per the FAQ for that NOAA website, “The NWS has 60 days to submit their data files to the NWS Headquarters in Silver Spring, MD. The NWS Headquarters (NWSHQ) then collects all of the data files from the 123 NWS Forecast Offices. The NCEI receives a copy of this database approximately 75 days after the end of the month. A publication and archive are produced and the Storm Events Database are updated within 75-90 days after the end of a data month.” Clearly not a primary source for the Doppler on Wheels data, which is not owned or managed whatsoever by NOAA.

To list a few secondary reliable source news articles (let’s ignore the tons of peer-reviewed academic papers already cited in the article currently), we have [2][3][4][5][6][7] as well these published in 2024: [8][9][10](TWP)[11]. Again, those are just a handful of news articles related to the mobile radars and how they improve science. I’m not going to go through and list every reference in the article, since a ton are secondary, peer-reviewed academic papers.

(Too Long;Didn’t Read Summary) Basically, Keep the article, bust just rename it. Invalid AFD in my opinion, as even the nominator gave an alternative to deletion. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 15:27, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram: With what you stated, I do agree with you. If you would wish, you could withdraw the AFD and move the article. I could reformat it and talk page discussions regarding what is/is not notable could occur. Since you gave an out for deletion, and I agree with the alternative, withdrawing the AFD and following that process may be best, rather than try to wait over a week to do the reformatting and such. So, would you be up to withdrawing the AFD and then renaming the article so I can reformat it appropriately? The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 15:41, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seems the best solution! Fram (talk) 15:44, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]