Talk:2004 Atlantic hurricane season/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 13:14, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

• "The 2004 Atlantic hurricane season was the costliest Atlantic hurricane season, until the following year": I don't think it's ideal to have an opening statement that immediately has to qualify itself. How about "The 2004 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the costliest Atlantic hurricane seasons on record, exceeded only by the following year", assuming no other subsequent season also exceeded it.

• Good call--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

  Looks like you didn't yet make this change? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• "leaving severe impact" is a bit clumsy. How about "Later in August, Hurricane Frances struck the Bahamas and Florida, causing at least 49 deaths and $9.5 billion in damage".

• Done--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• "The most significant storm in terms of intensity and damage": suggest "The most intense storm, and the one that caused the most damage, was Hurricane Ivan"; or "Hurricane Ivan was the most intense storm of the season, and was the storm that caused the most damage".

• That was pretty much a template sentence (one that I would copy-and-paste, then switch the storm names). Anyway, I'm picking your first suggestion.--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• "Impact" is overused in the lead; it's a generic word and it would be better to use a more definite word like damage when possible.

• The word "damage" is actually used more than "impact". Would affect/effect be a better synonyms?--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

  Maybe this is a British English/American English issue. Looking at the lead again, I think what's bothering me is how the word is used, rather than its frequency. I think you can say "the storm had little impact on the coast", but "bringing catastrophic impact" just sounds wrong to me. Impacts are generally impacts on things, not just impacts on their own. I'll come back to this and try copyediting it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

  I looked at the lead of half a dozen featured articles on Atlantic hurricane seasons, and as I thought, they barely use the word "impact" at all. Instead, for individual hurricanes they make specific statements about what happened: "made landfall", "caused heavy rainfall", "caused devastation". They avoid making general statements about lists of hurricanes, which is hard to do without generic words like "impact". I've copyedited the lead to remove the generic uses; please revert if I made a mess of anything. I've left many more uses of "impact" in the body -- GA doesn't require the prose to be perfect, but I think this is a flaw that needs to be addressed if you plan to take this to FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:20, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• "Forecasts of hurricane activity are issued before each hurricane season by noted hurricane expert Dr. William M. Gray and his associates at Colorado State University (CSU)": I think this needs to be more specific to the 2004 season, since Dr. Gray hasn't issued a forecast before every single season, and no doubt will stop doing so at some point.

• Nobody has ever had a problem with this. I'm not sure how to fix this. Should I just mention the year Dr. Gray began issuing forecasts and we can call it a day? For example: "Since 1984, forecasts of hurricane activity have been issued before each hurricane season by noted hurricane expert Dr. William M. Gray and his associates at Colorado State University (CSU)"--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

  That works, but if it's boilerplate text from the Wikiproject I'm inclined to just leave it alone for GA, which doesn't require perfect prose. It's fairly clear. I've struck my comment, but the date wouldn't hurt. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• "Ivan was attributed to generating a 91 ft (28 m) wave": sense needs to be reversed. As it stands this means that generating the wave caused Ivan, not the other way around.

• Better?--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

  Much. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• "Due to its location, Alex reached major hurricane status second farthest north in the Atlantic, after Hurricane Ella in 1973": what does "due to its location" mean? Can it just be cut?

• Yeah, just a little verbosity :P--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• "The hurricane fell to tropical storm": I would think this should be either "The hurricane became a tropical storm" or "The hurrican fell to tropical storm intensity".

• I think the latter was what I meant to write. There was just a word missing.--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• "Six hours later, it became extratropical": not sure what "extratropical" means, unless it just means it was located outside the tropics, but since the location is Newfoundland that seems unlikely. Is there a link that could be used, or could this be explained inline or with a note?

  I see this is included in glossary of tropical cyclone terms, so perhaps a link there would be the answer.

  Actually, I linked it later in the sentence, but I moved it to that part.--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

  I'm not expert in these terms, but it looks from the definition of "extratropical" here that saying a hurricane has become extratropical isn't quite the same as saying it's an extratropical cyclone, so wouldn't the glossary link be better for the first occurrence, leaving the other link for later in the sentence? Or am I misunderstanding the terms? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:00, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• "In combination with strong winds and storm surge, more than 100 buildings and houses were damaged": not quite right; the conditions weren't in combination with the damaged buildings. Do you mean something like "The combination of strong winds and the storm surge damaged more than 100 buildings and houses"?

• Fixed--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• "Impact in Florida was extreme, with strong winds causing 2 million power outages and destroyed more than 2,439 structures and impacted over 26,749 others": verb tense changes halfway through the sentence.

• Better?--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• "Diffluent" is a technical word and it would be nice to either avoid it or find a suitable link. Perhaps add it to Glossary of tropical cyclone terms?
• "thousands of others were inflicted damage": looks like an incompletely edited phrase.

• Better?--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

  No -- you can't say "were inflicted damage". I fixed it by recasting a couple of sentences. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:09, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• "Credited to a continued hostile environment, the depression did not intensify into a tropical storm": needs to be rephrased; the depression was not credited to a continued hostile environment.

• Better?--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• Is there a suitable link for "baroclinic" or "baroclinic trough"? Same question for "short-wave trough".

• "Baroclinity. I'm not sure about "short-wave trough", though.--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

  Good enough. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:09, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• "Winds left resulted in electrical outages": looks like an incompletely edited sentence.

• Fixed--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• "A larger extratropical storm absorbed Nicole on October 11": was this larger storm one of the ones in this list? If it was larger I assume it would be.

• Extratropical cyclone (in this case, "storm") was wikilinked in Hurricane Alex's section.--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• In the damage column you have five-digit figures without commas; per MOS:DIGITS you should include commas, which means for consistency this should be done for the four-digit numbers as well.

• Fixed--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• The '5737 total damage appears to be missing a digit -- it looks like it should be around $57 billion, not $5.7 billion.

• Fixed--12george1 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• Per the GA criteria, this is not a requirement for GA, but I think the list of external links could be substantially trimmed per WP:ELNO.
• The checklinks tool finds several dead external links.

  Still multiple dead links. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library)

Sources look fine; images are OK. I tried to check for close paraphrasing but the ones I wanted to check are dead links, so I'll wait till those are fixed. I'll place the nomination on hold. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:08, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I've struck most of my comments. I will have a go at a copyedit, probably tomorrow. There are a couple of items above left over; the main remaining issue is the dead links using the external links checker in the GA toolbox. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:17, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• One new point I just noticed: you mention Cyclone Catarina in the lead, but not the body; it should be covered somewhere in the body of the article (and not just as a "See also" link). Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:20, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

  @12george1: Just checking in -- let me know when you'd like me to take another look at this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:29, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

  @12george1: checking in again -- are you still planning to work on this? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:36, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Remaining GA issues

@12george1: since the review above has gotten a bit long and confusing, here are the remaining issues.

• The checklinks tools finds several dead links -- footnotes 5, 6, 9, 15, 27, 79, 80, 82, 83, and 88.
• Cyclone Catarina needs to be mentioned in the body since it's in the lead.
• "The 2004 Atlantic hurricane season was the costliest Atlantic hurricane season, until the following year": I don't think it's ideal to have an opening statement that immediately has to qualify itself. How about "The 2004 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the costliest Atlantic hurricane seasons on record, exceeded only by the following year", assuming no other subsequent season also exceeded it. You commented above that this was fixed, but it's unchanged in the article.
• "Six hours later it became extratropical": you link this to extratropical cyclone, but surely it should be to the "extratropical" entry in glossary of tropical cyclone terms? The meanings appear to be quite different, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:21, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

• I'm gonna fix the remaining dead links. The rest of the issues should be resolved. Btw, I'm just gonna remove that Catarina bit because it shouldn't be here at all.--12george1 (talk) 03:55, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
• @Mike Christie: I have fixed the deadlinks now, as well--12george1 (talk) 04:11, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Everything is now fixed, so I'm passing this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:33, 28 January 2015 (UTC)