Talk:List of New Jersey hurricanes

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Featured list star List of New Jersey hurricanes is a featured list, which means it has been identified as one of the best lists produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.
June 5, 2006 Featured list candidate Promoted

Contents

[edit] Pics

If anyone is here, how should the pics system go? Does Gloria make sense as the opening pic? What about Floyd? Which pic would be better, Floyd near NC or Floyd over New England? Hurricanehink 02:11, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Format

If we are going to make an article for each region/state, they need to have consistent formatting. Currently the Florida and Texas lists follow a very different format than this article... — jdorje (talk) 03:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

The Florida and Texas aren't the same type of list. They only list particularly damaging hurricanes, while this, which I based off of the List of California hurricanes, lists every NJ hurricane. Hurricanehink 03:07, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
My point exactly. We should not have two different list formats. What if I wanted to make a Catastrophic New Jersey hurricanes article - would this be a new article? — jdorje (talk) 04:12, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
But there's not really catastrophic New Jersey hurricanes. There were a few important ones or damaging ones, but very few get up here. I suppose the catastrophic would be a new article, but I don't see the point for it. The catastrophic ones are only (I guess) for areas that have so many hurricanes that they only pick the most important. Instead, NJ falls in the same category as New England, Arizona, and California. The only reason for two different list formats is, basically, not enough information for a catastrophic ones, so instead they list every storm. Hurricanehink 12:32, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Class

This article is obviously higher than Stub class. What is it? Hurricanehink 02:16, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I bet that if you just add a few more sentences on something other than the list of storms, it could be a start class. Icelandic Hurricane #12 23:05, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't really see it going higher than start-class with the current format. What about a format more like List of retired Atlantic hurricanes? — jdorje (talk) 06:51, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
The problem with this sort of article is that there can't be tables of all of them. However, should there be tables on deadliest storms, number of storms by month, or strongest upon entering the state, something like that? Hurricanehink 00:53, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes. Strongest upon entering the state is a bit tough though, since such things aren't recorded. I would like to make an NC article with similar records, but I wouldn't know how to find the strength of Hugo or Donna. — jdorje (talk) 04:40, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Strength could be based on peak winds while in the state, with Hurdat as a source. Storms before 1850 would be omitted due to lack of information. I'll work on the others. Hurricanehink 14:28, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
"Strength" should be based on pressure. The problem is the best track only gives 6-hourly entries so they don't always list what strength a storm was when entering a particular state. (They do list how strong each storm is at landfall, but most storms don't make landfall in NJ.) One thing the best track does give is the wind strength category in each state. Search the hurdat-formatted best track data for "NJ" and you will find entries like "NJ1" for storm 11 of 1878; this means that storm caused category-1 winds in New Jersey. Interestingly there has never been an NJ2 storm and the most recent NJ1 one was in 1903 (yes, 103 years ago). I wonder if the data is incomplete after 1914... — ;jdorje (talk) 15:19, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, only 3 storms have actually made landfall, at landfall would be hard. I could just use the best track position from when it was over the state. I'll work on this later tonight or tomorrow (going out soon). Yea, that's weird there has never been above an NJ1 here, yet New England has seen 3's on multiple occassions. Hurricanehink 15:27, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The whole thing is in present tense. Is that fine, or should past tense be used? Hurricanehink 00:04, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

The past events (i.e., the list section) should definitely be in past tense. — jdorje (talk) 00:37, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Okeydoke. Hurricanehink 00:43, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FLC

Here goes nothing. I put it up for FLC. Hurricanehink (talk) 11:39, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Timelines

I have added some meta:EasyTimelines to the article - not sure if they belong where they are at the moment or should be under their own section heading at the end, since they go through more than one decade? Please feel free to take your pick :) TheGrappler 01:40, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I guess the whole thing could go at the very end, after the storms but before listed by month. Also, good work with it, though I'm not convinced of its usefulness. A smaller version would be nice, with only deadly or notable storms being listed. Every storm is a bit overkill, and including damage or deaths in it is a bit redundant. Hurricanehink (talk) 03:36, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Smaller is hard, unfortunately, due to years being crammed close to each other. It might be possible to slice it into smaller segments, but then context is lost. I agree it would be better to cut it down until it just has the fundamental key points, which is something I am thinking about how to do. Is it useful? I think so - I reckon the article was missing something like this. I find that something strongly visual like this gives a better idea of the timescale of events; the text of the article is very dense, as was noted as WP:FLC. I originally put them in at the end, I'll move them back there. The alternative would be to move them towards the front and have them as a "drop-down outline" for the text that follows (which was pretty much the reason I moved them to under the section headings, but the periods covered don't match). TheGrappler 04:34, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
I've trimmed back (possibly not enough, but considerably). How about the space to the right of the TOC? If the timelines serve as a brief "introductory summary" this might be the best place for them - when hidden they do not taking up critical room, when expanded they lead into the more complete list. TheGrappler 06:41, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contradictions

I noticed that there was an unpleasant contradiction between the main text and the "deadliest storms" table. Hurricane Doria killed three people in 1967 (this is mentioned in the table) but Tropical Storm Doria apparently also killed three in 1971 - and isn't mentioned in the table. Is this due to a mix-up between names? Was Tropical Storm Doria non-lethal? Or was it simply missed out of the table? If both should be in the table, can they be disambiguated in some way? Hurricane Edouard is missing from the table but is listed as causing two deaths. It ought to be noted (for Isabel and Donna, each having one indirect death) that only directly caused deaths are counted. The 1933 storm is listed as causing "many casualties" so ought to be one of the higher ones in the list (presumably), but the exact number isn't given and it isn't placed in the table. It's clearly not explained by the table excluding deaths offshore, since many of the casualties given for other storms were drownings. This all needs getting sorted out, preferably by someone with access to Buchholz and Savadore. This is probably my last remaining quibble but I can't see that this should be FL'd until it gets sorted... after that this will be an absolutely brilliant list! TheGrappler 03:31, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm only human, and I tried looking through the list to get all of them, but I see I missed those few you mentioned. I put them in, except for the 1933 storm. I put a note on top about it. Deaths offshore are included. Otherwise it would be confusing (Edouard has 2 NJ drownings in the ocean). Hurricanehink (talk) 03:44, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
No worries, shame it's not possible just to copy and cite somebody else's table! :-) Are we sure that the other storms were all non-lethal? The difficulty with the "list of deadliest storms" is that while sources may be found for NJ casualty numbers for individual storms, there may not be a source that says "and you don't have to worry about any of the other storms, none of them have known deaths in this state". This is complicated by the fact that a lot of sources aren't specific about where storm deaths occurred, just giving a total for the entire United States. If there's no way of telling whether this table is accurate, should this be mentioned in some way? Or another way found to present this information (for example, converting the table to text and writing in a way that suggests this isn't meant to be taken as a definitive list)? TheGrappler 04:44, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
I encountered that problem during the making of the page. I had suspicions on some storms that they caused deaths in NJ, like Gabrielle (1989), but had to do some digging to find out how many. The note you put in is perfect. There could and likely were other storms that caused deaths, direct or indirect, in the state, but due to lack of sources we simply don't know. Hurricanehink (talk) 13:49, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bolding hurricane names

The decision to bold hurricane names may be a little controversial so I thought I should justify my choice to do so here. Firstly, it is in line with the Manual of Style: the current advice on bolding text is to "make judicious use of [such] devices" in order to increase legibility. In particular, this is a list of hurricanes, and simply having a Wikilink wasn't making them stand out from the text enough for the hurricanes themselves to be easily identified. Secondly, one of the hurricane names was already bolded, so I thought rather than revert that for consistency it made more sense for the others to follow suit. Thirdly, while most featured lists do not bold the items they are listing, this is generally because their information is in a table and the appropriate names could simply be read from the appropriate column, or because the ordering was alphabetical and therefore the list looked something like:

  • Listed thing one (1823): definition of listed thing one
  • Listed thing two (1723): definition of listed thing two

...and so on, with the listed items standing out easiy from their wikilinking and their position in the bullet point. This list is very textual, with the hurricane names occupying various positions in the sentence or paragraph, so they do not stand out so well. There are other featured lists which currently bold the listed items, so it does not appear to be generally considered as bad practice. TheGrappler 11:25, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Good job, and I wouldn't have thought of that. Hurricanehink (talk) 13:46, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Track map

List of South America tropical cyclones is currently on FLC with a cumulative track map. Would it be worthwhile to create a similar map for this article?--Nilfanion (talk) 16:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Yea, sure. In fact, I was thinking about something like that, and I think there should be two images. One for a wide range covering the far-away storms, and a smaller image of storms that actually crossed New Jersey. The smaller one could be a subset of the bigger one, maybe. --Hurricanehink (talk) 21:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Yep, that makes sense. I'll leave it to you to make the lists up, you know where to put them. You know the geography of NJ better than me :P--Nilfanion (talk) 21:53, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
OK. :) I'm working on another List of page, so I'll put the two at the same time. Hurricanehink (talk) 21:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)