Talk:Climate of Minnesota

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Archives

Revamp Preview

1 New Article proposal
2 To-do list
3 Temp & Precip tables
4 Auto Peer Review
5 Stuff to add?
6 Graph
7 Peer review
8 { {Minnesota} }
9 Train Picture
10 Tornado
11 GA status

[edit] New Article proposal

I've been putting together a lot of info to expand this article. How does this look? I haven't done any of the formatting or references yet, but would like to get an idea of the layout and detail of this. The only major thing I have not done yet would be to add temperature and precipitation tables for a few cities across the state. Since I haven't checked up on everything yet I'm sure the deails aren't 100% accurate at this time, but I'll work on that. Thoughts? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gopher backer (talk • contribs).

I like it. good job. I hope you don't mind - I went through it and made a few changes: spelling, broken links, added some useful links, and improved some awkward wording. Still to be done: Hail should be mentioned, growing season variations by location, keep the snow-bound train picture, citations - the format I like to use for online sources is ^[1] Fill in as much information as you can find; rarely is it all available. Subsequent uses of the same source are simply ^[1] Appraiser 20:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] To-do list

~~Expand Floods section a little~~
* Change "Like a lot of states" to something else, or expand somehow in Floods section
* when did the other floods occur? Change to overview then example?
* Add another picture or two (in the lower half of the article)
* summer -> "...high and low temperatures..." should that be ".. daily high..."?
* Have an example of "Northern Minnesota is considerably cooler and less humid than southern Minnesota is during the summer months." ?

~~backup "a frequent summer occurrence" with example? "one ever N days" ..." "N times a month"~~
- ~~It does list a figure (30-40 times per year) in the into section of Summer. Is that good enough?~~

* list tornado outbreak examples in date order (oldest first?)
* Add references where there is the
* Expand lead section
** Note, try this: Copy entire article to somewhere like User:Gopher backer/sandbox and start ripping material out of the article until only the most important sentences are left. Condense and re-write these as the introduction.
***Thanks, that worked well. How does the intro look now? Do I need to re-reference everything if that's already done farther down in the aricle?
****Nope, there shouldn't be any refs in the intro since the intro is just a summary of stuff described in more detail below. I'll take a look at the intro now... -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 16:59, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
***** Looks great, just remove the refs. -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 17:28, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Which famous blizzards did Panhandle Hooks produce?
Add blizzards and winter storms section under winter ?

* Is lake ice-in and ice-out worth mentioning? Is that climate?
** Hmm, good question. I don't think Ice-out is as much about climate as much as it's about an event that is affected by climate. I would consider Ice out, Dust storms, forest fires in that category. However, I think Floods could also be put in that same group, since it's a result of a climate condition. The reason why I put floods in there in the first place is becuase Minnesota has seen 2 or 3 really devestating floods over the past 10-15 years, but for consistencies sake maybe it should be removed. Or, maybe we could add another section devoted to topics not directly related to climate, but of natural phenomena affected by climate. Or maybe none of them belong in this article. Thoughts? Gopher backer 19:10, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I checked the appendix of the book I have. These are the page counts for the different things: floods at least 30. Fires (forest, prarie, city):6. ice-in part of one page. Dust storms 2, dust bowl 2. I think that floods shoudl stay in as a weather phenominom. Fires can probbably get a sentance under drought, and dust one under wind. Ice-in/out probably doesn't need to be mentioned, though it might be usefull to fishermen like me :) What do you think? -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 19:31, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

~~why is it not surprising that fall and spring are windy?~~

add charts like here [1], done in SVG.

~~Add some info on hail~~
~~Add info on the growing season~~
~~Photos~~
~~Climate tables for tbd cities (high, low precip?)~~
~~More detailed formatting (celcius, metic additions)~~
Gopher backer 03:36, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Temp & Precip tables

Any ideas on these? I tried to fit them in as best I could, but I'm not sure how good it looks, I just kind of made up the formatting since there does seem to be any pre-made templates for Climate of States (though there are some for climate for cities, but those won't work here...). I also have matching tables for celcius & centimeters but didn't know where to put these in. Would we want to put the tables in, just put those values in () next to the existing values or just leave it as is? As for the cities, I tried to pick cities that were spread across the state, if there should be more of less let me know that as well. Gopher backer 04:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Tables look pretty good, I think they fit in nicely. I would put the celcius figures next to the F ones as in the reference I added to the last table. -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 05:22, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Auto Peer Review

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.
Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 8 cm, use 8 cm, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 8 cm.^nbsp
Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), when doing conversions, please use standard abbreviations: for example, miles -> mi, kilometers squared -> km², and pounds -> lb.
Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Build the web, years with full dates should be linked; for example, link January 15, 2006, but do not link January 2006.^linkdate
As per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), dates shouldn't use ^th; for example, instead of using January 30^th was a great day, use January 30 was a great day.
As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space inbetween. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2]
Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.^copyedit

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 01:03, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stuff to add?

I picked up a few Minnesota books from the library the other week and yesterday I remembered one was on climate. Here are the interesting things from it and a ref. ^[2]

Quote on the back cover, might be usefull "Whats the adage in Minnesota? If you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes, it'll change? Mark seely brings us ..." - Cathy Wurzer
- might be usefull in spring/fall sections?
  - I actually considered adding this statement, but when I did a Google search on that phrase I found that a lot of states/regions say the same thing about their weather. So while it may be true Minnesota more than other states, I wasn't sure if I should add it. http://www.google.com/search?q=don%27t+like+the+weather+wait+a+few+minutes&hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-40,GGLD:en&start=10&sa=N Gopher backer 19:26, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
There have been at least seven F5 tornadoes - Page 25
- That sounds about right. Meteorological observations began in Minnesota in 1820. 186 years / 7 F5 tornadoes = 1 every 26 years. But since you could make arguments about MInnesota not actually being a state until 1858, or the accuracy of reporting F5 in the 1800's, I didn't know if I should try to proclaim an exact number as fact, so I went with the "around one every 25 years" statement. Did they say what the specific tornadoes were? Wiki has a List of F5 tornadoes, but it only has 6 for Minnesota. Gopher backer 19:26, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

* Lake superior stifles convection and therefore tornadoes - p25
* Snow has fallen every month but July at some point, but Augusts fall was only a trace in duluth - p25

* snow cover of 1+ inches averages 110 days in the state, 85 days in the south, 140 in the north. -p25

On average MN experncines one to two blizzards a season. - p31

* example of an extreme winter: 96-97 with 11 blizzards statewide - p31

- $215 million was spent on plowing roads that year. - p31
a blizzard is defined as : Winds exceeding 35 MPH, snow and blowing snow for 3+ hrs, visibility < 1/4mile, and falling tempreatures usuaally with dangerous wind-chills - p90
NWS classifies a winter storm as: hazoardous conditiosn resulting from siginificant quantieis of freezing or frozen preciptiation sometimes combined with strong winds and cold tempreatures. - p90
in minnesota it also implies 6+ inches of snowfall withing 12 hours or 8+ inches in 24 - p90
on avergae MN sees 3-4 winter storms a year - p90

* Except for the North shore Minnesota wind is primarly prevails from the south-woutheast during may-october and from the northwest nov-april. - p32

** THANK YOU. I knew this to be fact but could not find anything to back it up. Gopher backer 19:26, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

The book goes in this order, if you care: winter - coldest places, winter storms, siginifcant days - spring - snowmelt floods, may rituals, metorilogical lamentations, siginificant days - summer -hottest places, severe convection weather, growing season, significant days - fall - indian summe, fire weather, siginificant days - index

If there is anything in the article you want a second source for, ask me I bet its in the book. -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 17:27, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Graph

This data [2] could be used to make a nice graph. I will attempt to make a cool one with SVG soon-ish. -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 03:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Will we be able to do this for several cities without cluttering up the page too much? The only problem with this is I don't think we should do just Minneapolis, because there is a Climate of Minneapolis, Minnesota page (which I will get to eventually) where that info could go if we were just going to do Minneapolis.

Another possibly solution would be to try and generate one graph for the whole state, but I don't know if there is a meteorologically possible way to find out definite averages like that for a whole state. Gopher backer 18:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe state averages should be used, they don't really demonstrate much of anything. Over 60% of the states residents live in the twin cities so a temperature measurement from there would probably be best. Maybe Chanhassen is the best spot though, because thats where the official federal readings are taken. -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 19:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Peer review

I have submitted this article for peer review since GA seems to be clogged with hurricanes, and this is a long article which WP:GA recommends sending to peer review. I haven't removed the article from GA, but that can be done if anyone wants to.-Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 06:06, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] { {Minnesota} }

Should this be placed on in this article? Gopher backer 16:11, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I would say, "yes". Appraiser 16:15, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Train Picture

I rearranged things a little bit to see if I could fit the train picture in the main body. However, I didn’t mind the train picture in the intro at all, so if we want to move it back there go right ahead. Even if that happens I think I like the end result of the other changes I made with the images and charts So in that case I’d try to find another picture to go where the train is right now. Gopher backer 18:46, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Like your placement. I just stuck it in there because I was in a hurry. The train pic is good and should stay in, I just didn't know where to put it. -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 19:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I like having a photo on the first screen - to grab attention. I found a nice shot of Loring park for the Spring section. Nice graph, Ravedave. This article's looking good. Appraiser 21:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tornado

Could you get another picture of that tornado, without the road sign? It's very distracting. (kidding) Appraiser 20:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA status

Very good. Suggest breaking lead into 4-5 paras and making it more of a summary--it seems too facty to me. Very little is said of Autumn in the lead and it seems short in the text compared to other seasons. The PR script is below for more tips: