Number 19,August 2,2008

The Hurricane Herald

Storm of the month

Hurricane Bertha was a rare early seasonCape Verde-type hurricane and the easternmost forming Julytropical storm on record. Bertha became the longest-lived pre-August Atlantictropical cyclone on record and the longest-lived tropical cyclone in the Atlantic Basin sinceIvan in2004. The second named storm of the2008 Atlantic hurricane season, Bertha developed from atropical wave that emerged off the coast of Africa onJuly 1. After initially remaining weak while tracking westward, Bertha began to strengthen onJuly 6, and the next day it quickly intensified to reach peak winds of 120 mph (195 km/h). The hurricane weakened during the day onJuly 8, and after turning to a northwest drift, it passed within 40 miles (64 km) ofBermuda onJuly 14 before moving northeast away from the island. Bertha became extratropical onJuly 20 to the east ofNewfoundland, after causing minimal damage and three indirect drowning deaths.

Other tropical cyclone activity

• Northwestern Pacific Ocean – After several weeks of no activity,Typhoon Kalmaegi developed in the middle of the month, passing near northernLuzon before turning to the north and making landfalls onTaiwan andChina; the typhoon caused heavy crop damage and 18 deaths. Later in the month,Typhoon Fung-Wong caused further flooding in Taiwan and China. In addition to the two named typhoons,PAGASA issued advisories on Tropical Depression Gener early in the month.
• Eastern Pacific Ocean – Four named storms developed in the basin during the month, of which three became hurricanes; Hurricanes Elida, Fausto, and Genevieve, as well as Tropical Storm Douglas, all remained offshore, though in the middle of the month a tropical depression brought rainfall toMexico after hitting nearLázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán. Hurricane Boris and Tropical Storm Cristina continued from the previous month.
• Atlantic Ocean– In addition toHurricane Bertha, two other tropical cyclones developed in the month.Tropical Storm Cristobal formed off the coast ofFlorida, bringing rainfall and gusty winds to coastalNorth Carolina and laterNova Scotia. The most damaging Atlantic tropical cyclone during the month wasHurricane Dolly, which formed onJuly 20 in the westernCaribbean Sea. After tracking northwestward through theGulf of Mexico, it reached peak winds of 100 mph (155 km/h) before moving ashore onSouth Padre Island, Texas. The hurricane caused flash flooding from heavy rainfall, with damage in the United States estimated at $1.2 billion; across its path Dolly caused 21 deaths, including 17 from landslides in Guademala, as well as two indirect fatalities.

Member of the month

The July member of the month isUser:Plasticup. Joining the project in August of 2007, Plasticup first became an asset in working on the active article series onHurricane Dean. After a period of inactivity, the user returned to produce two featured articles this month, both interesting meteorological histories. Additionally, Plasticup has focused some attention to articles in the 2005 season. Keep up the good work!

New members

New and improved articles

• There were five new pieces ofFeatured content :1998 Pacific hurricane season (FT),Tropical Storm Chantal (2001),Meteorological history of Hurricane Dean,2007 Atlantic hurricane season, andMeteorological history of Hurricane Gordon (1994)
• NewGood articles include:Atlantic tropical cyclone,Cyclone Bola,Maximum sustained wind,Hurricane Henriette (2007)
• New storm articles include:Great Barbados hurricane,2002 Oman cyclone,Tropical Storm Kiko (2007)
• New non-storm articles include:Meteorological history of Hurricane Jeanne,Maximum potential intensity

Main Page content

• Typhoon Paka appeared asToday's Featured Article onJuly 5
• Typhoon Kalmaegi andHurricane Dolly appeared in theIn the news column during the month
• Entries from 2 articles:Meteorological history of Hurricane Gordon (1994) and1891 Martinique hurricane, appeared on theMain Page in theDid you know column during July.

Storm article statistics

Grade	Apr	May	Jun	Jul
FA	40	41	41	42
A	8	17	18	18
GA	131	129	135	139
B	103	101	96	15
C	0	0	3	98
Start	208	209	208	202
Stub	9	9	9	10
Total	499	506	510	524
ω	2.92	2.88	2.87	2.94
percentage ≥Less than C	43.5	43.1	42.5	40.5
percentage ≥GA or better	35.9	37.0	38.0	38.0

Project News
During July, there were two large changes to the operations of the WikiProject. First, WPTC adopted and helped develop theWP 1.0 B-Class criteria, and was among the first projects to use a "forced" B-Class rubric as part of their assessment schemes. This means that all the articles tagged with{{hurricane|class=B|...}} are automatically reassessed as{{C-Class}}, unless all the values in thechecklist are marked as passed. In other words, to mark an article as B-Class, the banner needs to be changed to

{{hurricane |class=B |B1=yes |B2=yes  |B3=yes |B4=yes |B5=yes |B6=yes | ... }}

B1, B2, B3, B4, B5 and B6 stand for each of the six points in theWikiProject's rubric. The banner also has the capability to markwhy an article doesn't meet the new B-Class standards: Typing the following in an article's talk page

{{hurricane |class=B |B1=no |B2=yes |B3=yes |B4=yes |B5=yes |B6=yes | ... }}

will assess an article as C-Class, and mark that the article is not a B because of bad references.

Articles assessed as B's before the introduction of the forced checklist were automatically reassessed as C's, but they're awaiting new reviews to check if they still meet the new B criteria. These articles are listed onCategory:Tropical cyclone articles with incomplete B-Class checklists. Currently, there's 117 articles in the category—let's try to shrink that number to zero before the next edition of theHerald!

The other major change to the WikiProject was the addition of threetask forces: thestorm articles task force,season articles task force, and thetropical meteorology articles task force. These three task forces allow WPTC to see the progress of the different areas of the WikiProject. Currently, all 1,076 WPTC articles have been assigned to one of the three task forces, but any unsorted articles will be placed inCategory:Unsorted tropical cyclone articles as they're tagged with{{hurricane}}.

In order to categorize an article, the banner needs to be modified from{{hurricane|...}} to:

{{hurricane |storms-task-force=yes | ... }}{{hurricane |seasons-task-force=yes | ... }}{{hurricane |meteo-task-force=yes | ... }}

which will sort the pages into the storms, seasons, and tropical meteorology task forces, respectively.