Talk:Great Hurricane of 1780

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Great Hurricane of 1780 article.
Article policies
Good article Great Hurricane of 1780 has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:

Contents

[edit] Deaths

If you give a range of 20-30,000 killed, doesn't that imply an estimate? RedWolf 06:19, Nov 14, 2003 (UTC)

I have added Hurricane Katrina to the list. The death toll seems like it will be quite substantial as well. (Anonymous user) 00:09, Sep 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dates

I have some information that might extend the hurricane's timeline and location. From http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/history/

Year: 1780

Date(s): 14-19 October

Principle Affected Area(s): Northeast Florida coastal waters - not counted

Landfall Point(s): Unknown, likely an offshore event.

Remarks: Apparently the series of legendary October hurricanes were making their presence felt along the northeast Florida coast. It is possible the strongest of the three, the 11-18 October “Great Hurricane”, may have come closer to the Florida peninsula than previously thought. Mr. Josiah Smith made the following report from St. Augustine, “Thursday 19th October. The weather as mentioned on Saturday, growing worse, by Sunday evening it came on to Rain and blow excessive hard, and till the evening of yesterday was a mere Gale at about N. N. E. by which means the Sea came in very heavily upon the front of the Town and raised the Tide several feet higher than common, and which ran through some of the Lanes up to the Second Street, above 150 feet from the bay...” South Carolina Historical Quarterly, Volume XXXIII, 1932, Josiah Smith Diary, Page 24.

Close Severe erosion occurred with this event.

It is possible the “Great Hurricane” came closer to the coast than previously realized and the pressure gradient may have been very tight along the coast. This report could also be attributed to “Solano’s Storm” in the later portion of the period.

Summary: This storm will not be counted as a hurricane, but it may be that the fringes of one, or more, of the series of “Great Hurricanes” influenced the study area.

Should we mention it at all in the article? There is only a few days of history on the storm, and this may be an extension of it. Hurricanehink 02:10, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Todo

There may not be much more information on this storm in which case it could qualify as B-class. But at least it needs references. Jdorje 07:13, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Jdoje, since the 7th and 8th most fatal storms are 1775, 1776, you might slightly extend your worst hurricanes table so people are better aware that bad news can come in several kinds of "triples" - next time they might leave sooner, prepare better or administrate more wisely. Specific to the GH of 1780 details, you might look into the report of bark stripping - that indicates extreme wind speeds, perhaps 200 mph, either water spouts galore or truly a great hurricane... --69.178.31.177 20:08, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sun Spots?

What is the information on sun spots doing in the article? I read the link and it provided only a vague hints at why the information might be relevant. Does anyone have concrete information that sunspots and intense hurricanes might be linked? If so, add the paragraph back, but it looked like vandalism to me, so I took the liberty of removing it. —Cuiviénen (Cuivië)

I agree that the link was bogus, but it seems fairly likely the information was accurate. If a real source can be found, the info could be added back...though obviously this article isn't the best place for it, there's so little real information on this storm that anything interesting could help. Jdorje 04:28, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

The storm record is a fact, the sunspot record and (longer) corresponding radionucleotide depositions are facts. Globally several sets of PhD+ astrophysicists have embryonic research in this area (solar activity) for climate and weather. Frankly I have never seen a good physical/energy model of the magnetosphere and solar activity for weather/climate, among several potential fundamental areas of solar activity modelling. (Not that I have especially looked either. Also IPCC has simply noted solar activity modeling as a wistful wish and seems to have ignored even doing the fundamentals). Interesting trivia seems quite appropriate, given the physical parallels, now and then. Progressive science frequently starts with observation and curiosity followed by measurement, record keeping and analysis. --69.178.31.177 20:08, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

They may be facts but you still have to include sources. The link you give doesn't mention anything about the 1780 period. — jdorje (talk) 20:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


The trivia section has two serious points about an anomalous coincidence: (1) that really bad news can come in clusters, a realization that the folks in NO did not seem to fully grasp - i.e. a hundred year storm doesn't mean you are safe for another 99 and in fact something worse might be coming (review the hurricane KIA results, 1775 through 1785, serially by year), (2) solar & (exo-)atmospheric physics for weather is not a done deal either, but this is only an interesting note of coincidence, not a claim.--Incogm 10:03, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

And, about a year later, I have once again removed that trivia section. Still no one has provided any source correlating (let alone suggesting a causal relationship) sunspot activity and intense or destructive hurricanes. Until such a source is provided, addition of random information about sunspots in 1780 will be treated as vandalism and reverted on the spot. —Cuiviénen 15:05, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello all. Upon reading this discussion board I was quite interested in the whole sun spot issue and figured I'd do some quick browsing. I am studying hurricanes at the University of Florida and trying to discover the many many variables that exist especially relating to larger time scales, like sunspot activity or the 40 and 1500 year activity cycles. Of course more time need be spent before adding something, but I came across an article that may be of interest. I don't have a clue how often these pages are checked, but I shall leave the link here. [[1]] I can look for more sources if necessary, though this article references several others as well. I'm quite surprised that someone has not gone about attempting to recreate the conditions under which bark can be stripped from a tree, whether solely winds or by wind and rain combined, and even the water spout/tornado idea. Anyways, I hope this one link suffices to merit sunspot mention as a possibile variable in the evolution of a monster storm, especially since we have been experiencing sunspot activity, global temperature rises, increased tropical activity, and others. Such a storm may present itself again in our lifetime even.~Jeff Inxtricablfate 07:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

This Houston group, The Weather Research Center, seems serious enough about correlating solar cycles and sunspots to predict hurricanes, for 20 years. 1900 Galveston is still a distant memory to be reckoned with there, as well as Carla.--Incogm 07:53, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Automated Peer-Review

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

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Kmarinas86 05:06, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article problems

Was just reading this article (seems a lot has been added, with some sources) and a lot does not add up. I'm gonna do some changes, add any comments here.

  • The death toll has been changed to '24000' now. Yet the most accurate source given, the NHC, still lists it as >20000 or >22000. The source that does say 24,000 says it is incomplete (and is obviously a less reliable source than the NHC).
  • It is claimed that St Lucia had the most fatalities with 6,000. In the next paragraph it is claimed there were 9,000 fatalities on Martinique.
  • Some of the text appears to be lifted directly from the sources. In particular the paragraph about St Vincent has many phrases taken directly from the Perez source.
  • Some mention should be made of the other two deadly 1780 hurricanes - if only to avoid confusion. A link to a season article in the intro would be appropriate.
  • Deaths do not add up? 4500(barbados) + 6000(stlucia) + 9000(martinique) + 4000(french fleet) + 4000(eustacius) = 27,500. Clearly this conflicts with the NHC number as well. More digging into sources would be useful here - it's important not to believe every number given by every source; when sources conflict some way should be found to resolve them. To start with a table of deaths by island would be helpful (many, many islands in the path are left out of that addition obviously).
  • Wind speed. The value of 200 mph is listed several places throughout the article. It seems this comes entirely from the claim that bark was stripped from the trees in Barbados, and some other random guy's claim that this would take 200 mph winds to achieve.

— jdorje (talk) 06:53, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't be so quick to trust the NHC as canonical. The NHC is just another organisation in this case; its not like it issued advisories or produced a TCR - certainly it is not a primary source for this storm. The individual damages are from the first reference in the article. The table on the NHC site is a referenced article, for example this one.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Point taken - though the NHC is a secondary source mostly based on other secondary sources, with knowledgeable people acting as the filter. If we had primary or secondary sources listing the death toll from each island, could we add those together to get a total death toll of our own? Or is that original research? — jdorje (talk) 19:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
That's probably fine. Hurricanehink (talk) 19:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Why was the table moved to the left side? It looks a bit awkward now. Hurricanehink (talk) 20:32, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Ho hum. I'm back and hope to be able to continue my edits tonight. However the problems with this article are not small and are not easy to fix (in fact I disagree with it being GA). The main problem is that all the sources we have are secondary and highly suspect; many of them include weasel words themselves (such as the "modern meteorologists" claim) and aren't really suitable for citing on such facts. Yet there seem to be no primary sources referenced, and given the time and the variety of locations influenced it's unlikely that English-language primary sources are available for many of the affected islands. — jdorje (talk) 21:35, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I thought we wanted secondary sources, given that we are a tertiary source? Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 23:36, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deaths by region

Storm deaths by island or region
(estimates)
Island/region Deaths
Barbados 4,500
Saint Vincent  ?
Grenada  ?
Saint Lucia 6,000
French fleet 4,000
Martinique 9,000
Dominica  ?
Guadeloupe  ?
Antigua  ?
Saint Kitts  ?
Sint Eustatius 4,000-5,000
Puerto Rico  ?
Dominican Republic  ?
Total 22,000+

My intent was to add a deaths-by-region table, that's why I moved the deadliest-hurricanes table down and to the left. This table is just the beginning though, it needs to be filled out (areas with unknown deaths can probably be left out of the main article for now) and references added. Unfortunately I'll be gone for the next week so I may not get to finish this for a while. — jdorje (talk) 05:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

One possibility is the 'french fleet' is being double-counted, most likely under martinique. This could explain some of the inconsistency in adding up these values. — jdorje (talk) 05:14, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Most of the death totals are from here. Hurricanehink (talk) 15:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Winds

I found a link saying winds were estimated at 135 mph. Shall I add it? Here:[2]Mitchazenia 13:18, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

It also says a Hurricane struck England during the month of November. It doesn't sound very reliable. I'm against adding it. Hurricanehink (talk) 15:09, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
I'd ignore the mention of the Great Storm of 1703 there. Its unfortunate but the fact of the matter is European storms are frequently known as hurricanes, the same is true of many sources. Incidentally, I have read data suggesting it was tropical in origin. That said, I would not trust that list any more than one on Wikipedia; in fact I'd trust it somewhat less as it seems to have a tendency to exaggerate. Find a real source for winds...--Nilfanion (talk) 23:49, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

That page has no sources, and is thus useless to us. — jdorje (talk) 21:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

There are a number of spots in this article where modern writers or meteorologists are mentioned (or the passive voice is used, as in "it is estimated that"), but the statements are unsourced. I think it would help this article's chances at GA if these statements were properly referenced. Chubbles 04:42, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Everything is sourced, actually. To avoid redundancy, sources are placed at the end of where one block of info is found. That is, if sentence 1 is from source A, and sentence 2 and 3 are from source B, ref A goes after sentence 1 and ref B goes after sentence 3. Hurricanehink (talk) 14:50, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
We do need to avoid using weasel words though. Saying "modern meteorologists say" something or "it is estimated that" is kinda misleading. Better to say "According to NHC re-analysis" (though that sadly doesn't apply yet) or "Professor John Doe estimates that". — jdorje (talk) 21:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA on hold

Wow, what an intersting read! Another gem from the Tropical Hurricanes project. The article is very close to GA quality, however I would like to see a few minor fixes first:

  • After reading through the article, I found myself wondering about what possible warning systems or preparatory systems may have been in place at the time, especially in heavily populated areas. I think you need to at least summarize that aspect of the topic from a good source.
  • I think you need to state in the lead exactly what data was typically recorded at the time, and state that a lot of data is missing because they didn't record it, if that's true, with a source.
  • "Exceptionally deadly"? Who said? A wee bit POV.
  • "It is believed the impetus of the hurricane..." - use active voice and specify who believes that.
  • "Late on October 10, the worst of the hurricane passed over the island, with modern meteorologists estimating winds in the hurricane reached over 200 mph." - break up into two sentences.
  • "Severe damage was reported on Dominica, Guadeloupe, Antigua, and Saint Kitts - many ships were washed ashore in Saint Kitts - though it is unknown if any died on those islands." - reword to avoid using dashes, and currently it sounds like it is unknown if the ships died.
  • "Throughout its path, the hurricane killed over 22,000 people, the deadliest hurricane in Atlantic hurricane history." - maybe reword to read, "...making it the deadliest hurricane..."
  • Check wikilinking - some terms are linked more than once, which isn't necessary.
  • Stylistic but grammatically incorrect comma usage. Remove commas:
    • "The system strengthened and increased in size as it continued westward, and first began affecting Barbados late on October 9."
    • "... causing heavy damage near the coastlines, and ultimately turned to the northeast before being last observed on October 20 southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland."
    • "The cyclone gradually weakened as it passed to the southwest of Dominica early on October 12, and subsequently struck the island of Guadeloupe."
    • "The hurricane destroyed all but two houses at Port Castries, and throughout the island, about 6,000 perished."

Thanks! --Mus Musculus (talk) 23:39, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Alright. First, there weren't any warning systems then. They didn't develop until the 1800s, as the National Weather Bureau (which ultimately became responsible for tropical cyclone warning) didn't formed until 1871. Next, I am not sure why a lot of data is missing, though it is probably due to its time period. As such, I put in that the hurricane occurred before the start of the hurricane database. Regarding wiki-linking, they're linked, at most, once per section, which I don't think is unreasonable. Other than that, I think I got everything. Hurricanehink (talk) 02:56, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much - excellent job on this article. --Mus Musculus (talk) 03:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dominican Republic?

It is more than somewhat incorrect to refer to the modern area of the Dominican Republic as the Dominican Republic before it became independent. I am fairly certain, but not completely certain, that the entire colony was called Santo Domingo before independence. Alll incidences of "Dominican Republic" should be changed to "Santo Domingo" with a note at the first mention that today it is the Dominican Republic. —Cuiviénen 23:00, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, good point. Before that is done, are there any other territories with the same problem? Hurricanehink (talk) 23:31, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
None that I know of. Most of the others are merely names of islands; the Dominican Republic is a country. —Cuiviénen 01:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
For the future, though, other ones to watch out for elsewhere include Belize (called British Honduras before 1973), and Haiti (Saint-Domingue before 1791). —Cuiviénen 01:09, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Yea, I remembered about Belize. Alright, I'll change it. Hurricanehink (talk) 02:38, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] class?

Since it's estimated that the storm had winds around 200+ MPH wouldn't it count as a category 5 hurricane?--Marhawkman 18:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

No, because it was estimated based on impact. Its true intensity is unknown. Hurricanehink (talk) 19:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

But isn't category 5 anything with winds of 155 MPH or more? If it had winds anywhere near 200 it'd be a Cat 5 storm.

Could we just mark it as

Cat 5(estimated)

? Or have a foot note explaining how the intensity is an estimate?--Marhawkman 14:33, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

It's still only an estimate on the gusts. There were no readings and no official estimate on the sustained winds. Hurricanehink (talk) 16:41, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Obviously I'm no expert but I don't see how it could have gusts up to 200 without sustained winds of 155 or more. I checked the official sources listed and none mention an estimate of sustained winds.--Marhawkman 20:17, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
This is the reference for 200 mph, and the exact words are "The wind blew so strong that it stripped the bark off the trees. Meteorologists are of the opinion that this effect is produced on wind velocities of over 200 mph." It could've been a tornado for all we know, but there were no meteorological readings, and thus it shouldn't be classified as a Category 5 hurricane (although it is certainly possible it was). Hurricanehink (talk) 20:46, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Sweeps Review: Pass

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I'm specifically going over all of the "Meteorology and atmospheric sciences" articles. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. I have made several minor corrections throughout the article. Altogether the article is well-written and is still in great shape after its passing in 2007. Continue to improve the article making sure all new information is properly sourced and neutral. It would be beneficial to go through the article and update all of the access dates of the inline citations and fix any dead links. Also, the quote in the impact section should have an inline citation directly after it. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have updated the article history to reflect this review. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 07:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)