Talk:Hurricane Gloria

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Featured article star Hurricane Gloria is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do.
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Contents

[edit] Todo

The article's almost there, just needs a little more info and a better introduction (no need to mention exact dates, but we should know where it struck!) Jdorje 21:26, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Todo: Fill in each of the sections. This is the next one to get a full revision, a la Floyd or Georges. Hurricanehink 22:17, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Still working on it. Here's some links for me to use so I don't lose it. This and this. Hurricanehink 02:27, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
OK this one's done. Just to let you know, I couldn't find any pictures of damage from this storm online that are not copyrighted. Hurricanehink 16:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Forget about that. Should there be any other pictures, and if yes, of what? I know this is B class, but how much more until A class? Hurricanehink 16:43, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
What's needed for A class? Hurricanehink 01:55, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Good question. Maybe an aftermath section should be split off? And, the article says one person died in New York state but the deaths table lists nothing for NY. — jdorje (talk) 02:16, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Yea, the deaths are a problem. Some sources say 11, some say 8 (more say 8). This site says there was one in New York and one in New Hampshire. The aftermath should be easy. This site shows disaster area information (so I don't lose it). Hurricanehink 02:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some places to be fixed:

  • "Intense flood waters split Long Beach Island in New Jersey for a period of time" - What does this mean?
  • "resulted in $5.5 million in damage for the state of Virginia" - I assume this is 1985 USD? It needs a 2005 equivalent.
  • What was the death toll in NY state? The NY section conflicts with the deaths table. In fact if someone died in NY then the death total should be 12, right?
  • The harvard section in preparations gives some info on impact. I'm not sure if this is bad (we did the same thing in the nasa part of Floyd's preparations section) but it might be a bit too detailed.
  • "citizens were suggested to evacuate" -> this wording is poor. It used to be worse ("Parts of NJ were suggested to evacuate").
  • "Due to the fact that" -> overly wordy; I changed it to "Because".
  • Rain totals - in other articles I've always converted feet to meters and inches to mm (based on some government document I read where that's what they did). Again here I changed your cm values to mm.
  • "Subtropical ridge" is mentioned in a lot of places (even more so than in other articles) but never explained. Maybe this needs its own article, or more likely a subsection of Atlantic hurricane.
  • Intro should be a little longer (2 paragraphs), but I don't know what else to add.
  • Paragraph organization of the impact section is pretty poor. It doesn't seem to follow a real narrative thread, either chronologically or by type of damage or by location. Generally the first sentence of each paragraph and the first paragraph of each section should serve to introduce that paragraph/section; however, in the Mid-Atlantic section the first paragraph covers storm surge, winds, and rain, while the second paragraph again covers winds and rain. I can't tell why there is a split between the two paragraphs, or why the sentences are in the order they are in. Maybe there should be three paragraphs - one for storm surge, one for wind, and one for rain, or maybe there should be one paragraph for each state/region; I'm not sure. The same complaint applies to a lesser degree to the other impact subsections.
  • There should be a lead paragraph (to go along with the deaths table) for the impact section.
  • Maybe there should be an aftermath section. This could cover the long island power company paragraph and the retirement. What else happened in the aftermath of this storm? Improved hurricane awareness in the northeast?
  • "Few reports were available from the island" => what does this mean? Damage reports? Wind reports?
  • It seems like the text "storm surge and strong waves washed away several fishing piers" is repeated about three times. Maybe this should be moved to the top-level impact summary paragraph (once its written).

Hmm, that's all for now ;-). These are things that would have to be addressed I think before an FAC. — jdorje (talk) 02:55, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow...... I added a hurricane aftermath section. The Bob part of the aftermath section might seem useless, but because Gloria was much less than expected, this complacency led to Bob's damage. I'll get the rest later. Hurricanehink 03:32, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
For the Mid-Atlantic paragraph problems, I'm not sure what you're talking about. I used the same format throughout the impact section. The first paragraph was meteorological statistics, and the second was damage stats. The "storm surge and strong waves" is sort of repeated twice, though I used different wording and other information to not repeat it. I got some more of the todo list. Hurricanehink 14:39, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
That's a reasonagle way to split it up, but there's some sentences that don't fit that. Coastal erosion is damage but is included in the first paragraph. Rainfall totals are meteorological but are included in both paragraphs. The sentence "Much of the coastline was unscathed" is also damage but is in the first paragraph. — jdorje (talk) 18:15, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Whoops about the paragraphs. I initially just got all of the information together. I fixed that part. Well, that means everything on the todo list is done except for the deaths. What should be done about that? The sources are conflicting. Hurricanehink 21:23, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, what's next for A-class? I think you and I got most of the problems you said. I removed the controversial death table due to lack of consistancy, and fixed other parts of the article accordingly. In addition, I can find no source for a North Carolina death, so I removed it. Hurricanehink 01:13, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Overall, very good. It just needs non-hurricane editors to read it to make sure we're not leaving jargon unexplained. That said, the preparations section is a little bit unclear. Here's the second paragraph:

Officials recommended citizens in portions of the New Jersey coastline, an area that rarely experiences hurricanes, to evacuate. Cape May County, the most vulnerable part of the state and among the most susceptible in the entire country, would require 36 hours to evacuate the 100,000 citizens and 900,000 tourists that were commonly present during busy summer weekends. [8] 397 unofficial shelters existed in the county in 1985 for the preparation of Hurricane Gloria, of which 150 were located on boardwalks; if the hurricane were to strike, only a small area in the northwest part of the county would be safe from the storm surge. Due to the vulnerability of the county, an evacuation of the entire county would be required to avoid significant human losses. [9]

It sounds like the text says that a full evacuation would be required if a hurricane struck now, instead of back in 1985, by the way it is worded. I'm not sure if that is the case (and if it is, then it certainly merits a mention), so I'm not going to try to fix it... Titoxd(?!? - help us) 01:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Outside of that, I've gone over and copyedited the entire article, corrected a few typos, and fixed a few things that were pointed out in FACs for other tropical cyclones. I've upped it to A-class, and the only thing that needs fixing is what I brought up above for a potential FAC. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 03:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Yea, most of that is if it struck today. Unfortunately, I couldn't find evac info from 1985. The only thing that occurred in 1985 was the recommended evacatuation and the number of shelters. However, most of the information still applies. Hurricanehink 03:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
It needs to be made clear what year the information applies to. If it's not 1985, then an "as of 2005" should be added. — jdorje (talk) 04:19, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

<---- Got it. Hurricanehink 04:22, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

One thing that could easily be done is to change the bare URLs to {{cite web}} citations. That would be something necessary for FA status. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 07:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deaths

Can we have a deaths-by-state table? — jdorje (talk) 06:09, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Nope ;) Too many sites I have found gave conflicting sources, including the total number of deaths (11 in TCR vs. 8 elsewhere). The TCR gave a by-state death toll, but because it was lowered for other things (including MWR and other sites I've found), it's a little hard to find death totals per-state. Hurricanehink 12:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pic

Gloria near peak intensity
Gloria near peak intensity

Someone on the FAC subpage that there should be a picture of the storm at peak intensity. That is a little hard to do, but there are a few options.

  • [1]- Visible Full-Earth image 9 hours after peak
  • [2]- IR of storm at peak
  • [3]- 1985 MWR (PDF)- go down to Gloria section- Visible close up of storm 10 hours after peak

I personally vote for the third one. If anyone has anything better, post it here. Hurricanehink 20:20, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

That...might...be better than what's there now. — jdorje (talk) 23:31, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I actually like the photo up there now as a better one, but not in the infobox. By all means keep the landfall one in the article, but I believe that the image shown directly under the highlighted text declaring a hurricanes strength should, well, show it at that strength, or at least as close to it as possible. If someone extracts that image from the PDF, or alternately the IR, and uses it in the infobox, I'll gladly support, you guys do have quite an article here. -Mask 17:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone have a way to make the PDF image brighter? It's pretty dark, and if it was brightened, you would be able to tell that Florida is located to its west and Cuba to its south. Hurricanehink 19:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, we could fiddle with the gamma level. We'd have to extract it from the PDF first though. And since when is the MWR public domain? — jdorje (talk) 20:05, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
It's a .gov site. Extracting is easy. If you want, I'll upload the image, and we'll decide if it works or not. Hurricanehink 20:10, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Just because NHC is a .gov site does not make everything on it public domain. The MWR is not published by the NHC, they just have an extract on their site. You can see more info and links at Monthly Weather Review. It seems quite clear that this is not public domain, and that it cannot be uploaded to wikipedia commons. — jdorje (talk) 20:39, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
But it's written by Robert Case, a government employee, and is also followed directly by National Hurricane Center, NWS, NOAA. I understand it is not published by the NHC, but given that it's at a government website and with National Hurricane Center in plain words at the top, I don't see how it's not public domain. Hurricanehink 20:48, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Okay. — jdorje (talk) 21:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, well, I just ran across http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/landsea_bio.html which includes excerpts from the MWR, and the disclaimer at the top says these copyrights are owned by the AMS, not by the author, and would therefore not necessarily be in the public domain. — jdorje (talk) 05:02, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Are you serious? Great... Well, should we ask an admin or something? Hurricanehink 12:58, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, we should ask someone. We should also try to find the original source of the picture - the MWR probably got it from NASA or something, and if we find the original it'll probably be higher-resolution and certainly free. — jdorje (talk) 22:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, there it is. If it were brightened, you could probably see Florida and Cuba, which I think is pretty important. Hurricanehink 20:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

So should that pic be added in there somewhere? Hurricanehink 21:33, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I put it in the infobox, and moved the picture that was there to the Preparations section. I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to move the old infobox pic to the New England Impact section, and move the precipitation map to the Aftermath. Thoughts? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 21:43, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FA

Congratulations, everyone, we have another one. —Cuiviénen, Monday, 3 April 2006 @ 12:05 (UTC)

Sweet. I guess my work paid off. Good work everyone! Hurricanehink 15:10, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moved from article

I've removed this addition from the article, as it seems mostly irrelevant:

During his 1988 Presidential campaign (and in his autobiography Shout it from the Housetops, Republican candidate Pat Robertson told a story about how, thanks to the power of his prayers, he had recently convinced God to reroute an unnamed hurricane away from the CBN studios in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The change in the hurricane's course allowed Robertson to continue preaching the Gospel on CBN without interruption. The hurricane in question happened to be Gloria. After Gloria veered away from Virginia, it hit New England hard. One of the states which suffered damage and fatalities was New Hampshire, where the nation's first Presidential Primary takes place. Robertson did not do well in this primary. [4]."Pat Robertson's contradictory theology: God won't stop a tsunami -- but might respond to Gay Days with an earthquake"

What does everyone else think? Titoxd(?!?) 02:56, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Get rid of it. No need for it. Hurricanehink (talk) 11:37, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Birds

Don't know where to add it, but interesting indeed:

"Trapped birds are sometimes seen circling in the eye, and ships trapped in a hurricane report hundreds of exhausted birds resting on their decks. The landfall of hurricane Gloria (1985) on southern New England was accompanied by thousands of birds in the eye." National Weather Service (October 19, 2005). Tropical Cyclone Structure. JetSream - An Online School for Weather. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved on 2006-12-14.

Titoxd(?!?) 22:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Value of damages

When gauging the impact of $900 million in damage in 1985 to what it might be today given the inflation of recent times, rounding the value of the damages to the nearest billion overstates it immensely, making it look like $1.6 billion in 2005 is worth $2 billion in 2006! (The dollar has done terribly in recent days, but there wasn't 25% inflation last year; people would be rioting in the streets!) I added three decimal digits to the "inflated" figure so that it is in millions like the original number. OTOH, if the "900 million" only has one digit of accuracy, this number should probably be rounded to "1,700 million", so if someone wants to do that, go ahead and change "inflated" to "1". Heian-794 12:50, 15 March 2007

______________________________________________________________________________

INCORRECT ARTICLE:

The original copy of this article needed correction. All the information about New England impacts in Rhode Island and Massachusetts was incorrect.Where the article states: "Gloria did not pass close enough to Rhode Island and Massachusetts to cause significant damage" is incorrect.The article goes on to correctly tally dmagae in Maine....obviously the storm went through Massachusetts to reach Maine.Gloria's afore-mentioned lop-sided windfield was exaggerated in the eastern sector which is the very sector which tore across Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts (especially the area just west and north of Buzzards Bay).Many of the numerous wind reports of hurricane force winds came from the southeastern New England area.Long term power failures in eastern and southeastern Massachusetts kept much information from making a true picture of what had happened a particular problem especially noted after hurricane Bob (1991) in the same vicinity when early reports of moderate damage later gave way to reports and severe damage. Gloria was experienced as a full category one hurricane in all of Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.

This article SHOULD read: There was some significant wind damage in Rhode Island and southeast Massachusetts to roofs,some of which blew off (South Kingston,Rhode Island and New Bedford,Massachusetts) and many trees were downed. Some coastal towns were without power up to five days (Westport,Massachusetts). Inland areas saw a considerable amount of vegetation damage,especially the Worcester,Massachusetts area.

Winds gusted to 112mph at New London,Connecticut,104mph at Padanaram,Massachusetts,and over 90mph at New Bedford,Massachusetts.Estimated gusts around 100 mph occured in the Worcester,Massachusetts location. Sarahbishopv 02:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


The cross referencing fot this information: newspapers: The Providence Journal Sept.28-30 1985 New Bedford Standard Times Sept.28-Oct.1 1985 Boston Herald Sept.28-30 1985 Boston Globe Sept.28-30 1985 publications: NHC: Preliminary Report:Hurricane Gloria:September 1985. New England Hurricanes 1635-1996:A Technical Report.Bishop-Valentine,S. 1996 Weather Observatory Records: Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory:Sept.27 1985: Milton,Massachusetts Sarahbishopv 02:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)