Welcome to WikiProject Tropical cyclones, a WikiProject to systematically organize all the information in Wikipedia related to tropical cyclones (also known as hurricanes or typhoons). This project's focus is to centralize the efforts of many Wikipedians to make Wikipedia the best free resource when it comes to information about the subject.
This WikiProject aims to provide a common layout for articles on official tropical cyclones—classified by any warning center, or considered a tropical cyclone in a scientific journal or publication—as well as the science behind them.
Goals
To provide an encyclopedic overview for tropical cyclones, including coverage of historical individual storms and the structure of a cyclone, and to categorize all known tropical cyclones in an effective and cohesive fashion.
The article for the "hurricane" (now known as tropical cyclone) was created on December 2, 2001. On October 3, 2002, User:Ed Poor created an article for Hurricane Lili while the storm was active and near peak intensity; since then, many other people have edited the article to help make it a . In March 2004, User:BigT27 created an article for the extremely active 1995 Atlantic hurricane season, one of the most active Atlantic hurricane seasons ever. On August 14 of that year, an article was created for Hurricane Iniki, the first non-Atlantic storm, and on August 31, the article for the 1900 Galveston hurricane became the first TC-related . On October 4, 2004, Cyclone Tracy became featured, which was the 2nd FA in the project. A week later, User:Golbez created the article for 2004 Pacific hurricane season, which was the first season article for the EPAC. On May 19, 2005, User:Tom created Template:Infobox Hurricane, which standardized the infobox that appears in every storm article. On July 20, User:Skywayman created the article for the 2005 Pacific typhoon season, which became the third basin to get season articles. On July 31, User:Holderca1 created the article for 2004-05 Southern Hemisphere tropical cyclone season – for the first several years on Wikipedia, the SHEM was handled in a singular article, but was split into SWIO, AUS, and SPAC beginning on April 16, 2007, and finished on April 21, 2013. During the extremely active 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, articles were created quickly for the most powerful storms, including Hurricane Dennis, which quickly became an FA.
On August 26, 2005, User:CrazyC83 created an article for Hurricane Katrina after the disastrous storm crossed over southern Florida. Two days later, there were 500 edits to the article, and the hurricane was threatening to hit New Orleans as a Category 4 or 5. We now know it was "only" a Category 3 at landfall. In the 16 years since Katrina, there have been over 6,327 editors that have contributed to the Hurricane Katrina article, along with 23 sub-articles. During the 2005 season, there were debates among editors whether lesser notable storms, like Hurricane Cindy (2005), should have articles. At one point in 2006, there were articles for every named storm during the 2005 AHS, but in the 13 years since then, articles for tropical storms Franklin, Harvey, and Lee, and Philippe were merged. As a way to coordinate edits among the tropical cyclone pages, User:Jdorje created Template:Hurricane on September 12, 2005. This is the same template that appears on the talk pages for every article in WPTC. On October 5, Jdorje officially created the tropical cycloneWikiProject. That October, in quick succession, the Atlantic hurricane seasons reached back to the beginning of recordkeeping (before 1600s) due to a collaboration of several editors; User:RattleMan created the first season article for the North Indian Ocean; User:Miss Madeline successfully nominated List of California hurricanes for featured list; and Jdorje created a a standardized storm path template.
In 2006, a series of users improved articles worldwide to featured article status. Professional meteorologist David Roth joined the project, and in the same year, the NOAA and NHC copied some material from Wikipedia, including track maps, and the Tropical Cyclone Report for Tropical Storm Chris (2006). In June 2006, User:Nilfanion created the project assessment page, which documents the status of every article, organized by basin, the year, and storm shaded by the quality. On August 1, the chat room on IRC for the project was created, which allowed real-time communication among editors. There's something special about conversing with fellow weather geeks during an epic storm, which seems to have become all the more common. On January 1, 2007, the number of good articles in the project reached 100. On January 29th, a collaboration of users made the List of retired Pacific hurricane names the first featured topic in the project. It was joined by the 2003 Atlantic hurricane season in March 2007.
In 2008, further collaborations helped make the article for tropical cyclone a featured article, one of 100 FA's in the project. Notably among project members, Tropical Storm Erick (2007) became featured on December 14, 2008. The storm lasted for a short amount of time over open waters, and as such, it was the shortest featured article anywhere on Wikipedia. Users questioned whether the storm was notable enough to have such a detailed article, but the article described the storm in articulate detail. After an AFD and two featured article review (and a series of low-notability storms being merged), Erick was delisted as a featured article on March 2, 2013.
In the period from 2008 to 2013, users created task forces for various basins, articles for all of the seasons in the Atlantic and EPAC, and enough high-quality articles that more than half of all storm/season articles were good or featured articles. In January 2008, there were 1000 articles in the entire project. On January 1, 2014, User:Yellow Evan created Typhoon Nancy (1982), which was the 2000th article in the project. In October 2008, there were 100 FA's in the project, which reached 200 on November 28, 2015, with Hurricane Fay (2014). By March 2016, every basin had at least 100 storm articles, multiple featured articles, and season articles of various quality. On May 9, 2020, Typhoon Warren became the 1000th GA in the project.
Please sign your name(s) at the bottom of this list if you want to join our WikiProject, but before doing so you have to sign up first. Once you added your name in the list, you can add our userbox, {{User WPTC}} to your userpage, subscribe to our newsletter, or join us at our IRC channel or Discord server! Note that you can subscribe to our newsletter, join our IRC channel and/or our Discord server without adding your name to this list if you don't intend to join our project - there are no firm rules here on Wikipedia. Once you are more established in this project enough, you can also invite prospective members of the project or welcome new members of the project. To invite prospective members of the project, use {{WP:WPTC/I}} or {{WP:WPTC/Invite}}. To welcome a new member of the project, use {{WP:WPTC/W}} or {{WP:WPTC/Welcome}}.
These users have not edited within the realm of tropical cyclones for a year, have not edited Wikipedia outside of user page or user talk page for several months, fully retired, or have been blocked or banned from Wikipedia. Their legacy is preserved here. Users who were blocked or banned have their usernames struck out. Users from this list can add their names back to the active list by removing themselves from the list, otherwise if you plan to fully retire from Wikipedia, you can add your name to the bottom of this list. Per WPTC bylaws, moving any members of the WikiProject to this list without fulfilling one of these criteria is prohibited.
WikiProject Tropical cyclones has a list of awards that may be found here.
Competitions
WikiProject Tropical cyclones also has an annual competition, the Cyclone Cup. This game is based off of the WikiCup, another annual event that involves the wider Wikipedia community.
General guidelines
Templates will provide a useful set of features to show information on tropical cyclones and seasons in a consistent format. Guidelines for naming, links, and categorization help keep the vast number of articles properly interconnected.
Basins
Tropical cyclones are separated by basin. Generally each basin has its own categories; all articles for a particular basin are inter-woven using links and categories. It's important that the basin is listed identically (including capitalization) for all articles. The basin is generally passed in to templates to automatically create categorizations and links within an article.
A number of templates exist to make life easier for tropical cyclone article writers. For a complete list, see Category:Tropical cyclone templates.
{{WikiProject Weather|tropical-cyclones-project=yes}} may be included at the top of talk pages of hurricane-related articles to let potential editors know about these resources. It also can be used to identify the assessment given to the article, as well as its quality on the assessment scale.
{{Infobox weather event}} provides a template for creating an informative table for any hurricane article.
{{Infobox tropical cyclone small}} is used to give a brief version of the hurricane infobox, and it can contain both a picture and a track map. This template is good for long season articles.
{{Current weather event}} provides a top-of-page warning (disclaimer) useful for active hurricanes.
{{Storm colour}} or {{Storm color}} is used to control the intensity coloration used on almost all tropical cyclone pages. In order to conform to WP:CONTRAST, these colors should not be used in conjunction with links, only plain black text.
Categories
Categorizing all articles consistently makes it easier for readers to navigate through related articles. The top-level category Category:Tropical cyclones should be reserved for a few select meteorological articles; most articles should be categories into several of the sub-categories therein.
Images
To make uploading and categorization easier, season and storm articles should have consistent types of images and those images should have consistent names.
Articles can be created on any storm that passes the notability guideline, provided they are reasonably well-written, comprehensive, and generally have several paragraphs of information on it in the body of the article. Articles may be merged by consensus, however.
Naming
Hurricanes, typhoons etc should only receive a separate article if they are notable and long enough not to be considered a stub. If a storm isn't notable and/or there isn't enough to write about, the text can go inside the article for the season or country list.
When creating a new article for an active storm when it may or may not be appropriate (i.e. a major hurricane currently threatening land), it is generally best to put a request up in the discussion for that hurricane season (e.g. Talk:2017 Atlantic hurricane season) and discuss it with others. However, we would also encourage you to be bold and make the article if you think it is notable or is very likely to become notable within 72 hours.
Named hurricanes generally do not have unique names. A storm that has had its name retired may take its name for the main article (e.g. Hurricane Charley, Tropical Storm Allison, Cyclone Tracy); use the prefix appropriate for the tropical cyclone's basin. Some storms, though not being retired or being the first occurrence of a storm with that name, may be enough of a primary topic to warrant forgoing the parenthetical disambiguation, i.e. they are highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term. In cases where a retired storm is not nearly as notable as another storm with the same name, the retired storm will keep the year in its title; the more notable, non-retired storm may or may not have its the year left off, depending on whether or not it is the primary topic.
Never hesitate to add a redirect when there is no article for a particular hurricane. Redirects help users to find information if it's "hidden" in a season article, and prevent spurious creation of new articles. This is particularly useful for active hurricanes, as users will otherwise often jump at the chance to write a "new" article about the event. Articles should be redirected to disambiguation pages or (only when there is no ambiguity) to the season article that includes the hurricane. Do not redirect to the season article when a disambiguation page exists, as there is then no way for readers to find the disambiguation.
This is also helpful for people who wish to provide links to WP for current storms: they can do it once, and the redirect will catch the in-links unless and until a separate page is created. Question: should the redirect go to the season page, or the section thereon for that specific storm? Answer: The Section.
Unnamed (including numbered) hurricanes (used for older tropical cyclones in all basins) should be distinguished by location, type, and year. The acceptable naming convention is 1928 Okeechobee hurricane. All unnamed hurricanes should always have a year in the name. Again, create redirects wherever necessary to avoid confusion or duplicate articles.
Storm article structure
Use one of the infobox templates above at the head of the article. Other templates may also be useful for active hurricanes.
Each storm article should have a track image if possible. See /Tracks.
Add {{WikiProject Weather|tropical-cyclones-project=yes}} at the top of the talk page of tropical cyclone articles.
Tropical cyclone articles should always link to the season they are a part of (included in the templates). For instance, Hurricane Camille links to the 1969 Atlantic hurricane season. A link should also be included to tropical cyclone. These should generally come in the article header.
When there are multiple articles about a particular storm, that storm should have a category identical to its article name; in this case the storm category should be categorized the same way the article is. See Category:Hurricane Katrina or for an example.
Main infobox image
The image used in the main infobox should be as representative of the storm as possible. In most cases, this means using a high-quality, true-color visible satellite image of the storm as close to its peak intensity as possible. However, if an iconic image of the storm exists, that image should be used over the others. This image should also be a high-quality visible satellite image. In terms of quality, visible satellite images always beat infrared images and other types of satellite images, especially ones that are generated by the user.
The images should be as realistic as possible, and they should be high-quality.
If the storm had multiple similar peak intensities, or the peak intensity was difficult to distinguish, then an image from any of the storm's peaks may be used.
See this page for details on WPTC's infobox image guidelines.
Storm set index articles
All tropical cyclones of the same name should be visible through a set index article (e.g. List of tropical storms named Dean). If none of the disambiguated storms are particularly infamous the main name may be used for the set index article (e.g. Hurricane Danielle). The set index article should be basin-independent and should cover all storms in all basins with the same name. If in doubt use "Tropical Storm" or "Tropical Cyclone" as the prefix for the set index article when multiple basins are involved.
Exception: a set index article may not be needed when there are just two storms with a certain name and one at the base name has a hatnote to provide navigation to the other. See for instance Hurricane Andrew.
Set index articles are also categorized by basin (sometimes into multiple basins); see Typhoon Nina for an example. An example basin category is Category:Atlantic hurricanes.
Add {{WikiProject Weather|tropical-cyclones-project=yes}} at the top of the talk page of season articles.
Link to other appropriate season articles. For instance 2005 Atlantic hurricane season links to the articles for the 2005 NW and NE Pacific seasons and to the 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008 N Atlantic season articles.
Season articles should include an overall summary plus a short summary for each storm, with a link to the storm page where appropriate, preferably as part of the lead section. See 2004 Atlantic hurricane season for an example. If a storm's summary becomes too long it may be moved into a separate article.
Categorize the season into a season category; see Category:Tropical cyclone seasons for choices. There is a template to help with this.
Each season should have a track image if possible. See /Tracks.
Hierarchy definition
Tropical cyclones are categorized by basin, strength, season, and region. Seasons are categorized by basin and year.
This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk·contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged or categorized (e.g. Category:WikiProject Tropical cyclones articles) correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.
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