Talk:Tornado outbreak of March 30–31, 1962

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Tornado outbreak of March 30–31, 1962/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: KN2731 (talk · contribs) 10:10, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

I'll take a look at this when NCDC's website goes back up. Currently it's giving me a 503 error so I can't go through the sources at all. ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 10:10, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

One major thing I've noticed is that the aftermath is far too short, considering the significance of the Milton tornado. The section – in fact, the entire article – relies entirely on information from the NWS/NCEI, which perhaps explains why the aftermath is seriously lacking. After doing some searches over the past day I've turned up the following sources:

• "TORNADO KILLS 15 IN FLORIDA TOWN: Scores Are Injured as Storm Strikes Without Warning". The New York Times. 1 April 1962. p. 1 – via ProQuest using The Wikipedia Library.
• A few newspaper screenshots from this website:
  • "Tornado Blasts Milton Area: 15 Killed; 78 Hurt Seriously in Storm". The Press-Gazette. 1 April 1962. p. 1.
  • "Winds of Destruction: Milton 1962". Pensacola News Journal. 29 March 1992. p. 13A.
  • "30 years later, scars remain from the deadliest tornado". Miami Herald. Associated Press. 31 March 1992. p. 18.
• "Tornado still haunts Panhandle residents". Tampa Bay Times. 31 March 1992. This looks the same as the Associated Press article published in the Miami Herald linked directly above.
• Using newspapers.com turns up significant coverage in the The Pensacola News/Pensacola News Journal from 31 March 1962 and (at a minimum) 3 April 1962; for the former the Milton tornado was front page news on all 4 days. Access to newspapers.com can be requested through The Wikipedia Library, though you may want to ask someone in WikiProject Weather who already has access to help you clip the relevant articles. FWIW I don't have access myself, all this info was gleaned from going to https://pnj.newspapers.com and fiddling with the search-by-date function to look at the headlines. Other major Florida newspapers could have significant coverage too; the tornado was front-page news on the Miami Herald on 1 April 1962 (this clip was already publicly available somehow).
• This YouTube video shows close-ups of some newspapers too. (Yes I'm aware YouTube is generally considered unreliable since it hosts user-generated self-published content, but the newspapers shown in the video are likely reliable sources.)

I do recognise that GA criteria 3 (broad in its coverage) isn't as strict as FA criteria 1b (comprehensive) – if this was FAC I would expect nearly all of the above venues to have been used, but this isn't FAC and so I don't exactly mind if the newspapers.com sources aren't used since they're technically paywalled and access via the Wikipedia Library, while free of charge, still requires an email address (which people may not want to link out of privacy concerns). All the other sources, though, can be found with a bit of Googling.

In summary, I feel this article is some way from meeting GA criteria 3, but not far enough that it would warrant a quick-fail. Hence @ChessEric: would you prefer if I leave the GAN open while you expand the aftermath and I come back to review prose and everything else afterwards, or I fail the GAN so you can work without time pressure and renominate whenever you feel like it? ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 10:00, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

There are plenty of newspaper I can look up. I mostly made the GAN to get it to A rank, but I'm willing to get it to a GA as I did with the Tornado outbreak of Leap Day 1952 article I made. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 10:17, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

I guess I'll leave the GAN open then while you expand the aftermath, and review prose etc once you're done. ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 10:42, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Okay. The links will also help me add more damage info to the Milton tornado section since, as you saw, the NCEI said almost nothing on it. Most of the summary info actually came from a comment made on the THP site, which was taken offline quite some time ago. For now, I'll put the ones I can in the article as external links. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 01:52, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

@KN2731: Can you check it now? It may still be a little inadequate, but I think its a start. If anything, this research allowed to actually get more information on the damage done as well as the (very inaccurate) weather forecast for March 31, 1962. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 03:41, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Yeah it's looking much healthier now – would prefer to see ref 5 split up into separate inline citations. I probably won't have time to do a full prose review till the weekend but I'd like to point out WP:FORMAL especially for Aftermath's second-last sentence. ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 07:15, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

@KN2731: Sorry. My laziness showed up there. XD ChessEric (talk · contribs) 02:41, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

The refs are split now. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 04:54, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

• "Additional deaths and injuries were caused by lightning as well." Just state the number - something like "Another two deaths and three injuries were caused by lightning"
  •  Done ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:34, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• "which was coupled with a humid dewpoint of 65 °F (18 °C)" - might as well simplify and say "and the dewpoint was 65 °F (18 °C)".
  •  Done ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:34, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• "along with increasing winds southerly winds that bought moisture in from the Gulf of Mexico" - run-on, should be split into its own sentence
  •  Done ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:34, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• "Despite overcast skies being over the area since early on March 30 and scattered storms passing over the region just after midnight on March 31, these conditions remained in place until the much stronger storms entered the area later that morning." I'm not exactly sure what the point of this sentence is - those conditions were there until they weren't...? Is this supposed to describe how the day's weather evolved?
  •  Done I needed to restate what I was talking about in the previous sentences. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:34, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• Link Skipping tornado and tornado family
  •  Done ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:34, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• "garages and outbuilding were blown over" - missing plural?
  •  Done I forgot the "s" on outbuilding. :p ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:34, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• "A total of 12 additional residences were damaged as well" - can be trimmed, something like "Another 12 residences were damaged" would work
  •  Done I probably wrote it out like this to avoid putting the number at the beginning of the sentence, which would cause it to need to be spelled out. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:35, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• "one home was swept off its foundation while neighboring home was lifted off its foundation" - missing word
  •  Done ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:34, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• "At the corner of Magnolia and Orange St, a man's car stalled right in the path of the tornado, which picked his car and carried two blocks to Stewart St, where it landed essentially intact." Run-on sentence, either condense or split
  •  Done I honestly thought I had already done that. Sorry. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:34, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
• "the worst tornado ever recorded Santa Rosa County" - missing word
  •  Done ChessEric (talk · contribs) 20:30, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
• Which refs are supporting which info in the Milton tornado section??
  •  Done Sorry; my laziness showed there. :/ ChessEric (talk · contribs) 20:30, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
• "Even 30 years later, residents who lived through the event were still haunted by the events that occurred that tragic morning." - overly sensational, we aren't a news site
  •  Done I didn't think this would stay. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 20:30, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
• Check consistency of Oxford comma throughout
  • Similar to what I said below, I need some help figuring out where exactly this needs to be done. I fixed the obvious ones though. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:36, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
    • Looks like you got all of them. ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 09:02, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
• Try citing the newspapers directly rather than just the website the clippings appear on e.g. for the realclimatescience.com and rarenewspapers.com refs
  • Can you give me an example of this as I'm not the best with citing. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 20:30, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
    • Did both (along with other fixes) with these two edits. ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 09:02, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

That's what I got from a quick read-through. ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 10:29, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Can you screenshot the page 3 of the Storm Data report? That page actually has the Milton, Florida tornado entry. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 20:30, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Actually, I may just look for a link to the Storm Data through something like Google Books, which I used to cite the CDNS report when I was working on the Tornado outbreak of Leap Day 1952 article. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 00:34, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Bleh, I didn't realise the archive stopped working - I left a HTML comment in the ref with instructions on how to access the document. Don't think we can really do anything else about that. ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 09:02, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Couple last things:

• "Debris was carried as far away as areas north Baker another as well as Andalusia, Alabama" is a little jumbled up.
• "as of 2022 it has an estimated population of over 10,000 residents" needs a source.

Copyvio clear (Earwig gives 6.5% from names of places, eye test looks ok); sourcing clear (I was hesitant about WeatherSpark till I saw they source their info to NOAA so it should be fine). Nothing to say about images since, well, there aren't any. Thanks for your quick response to all my comments, apologies I haven't really been able to engage that quickly since I don't have access to my laptop 4-5 days a week. ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 09:02, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

No worries; we have things to do in our lives. I actually just found more information on the Milton tornado and will be adding that as well. I really hate that I can not find photos of this tornado or its damage without having to go through copyright procedures though, as I really like using pictures. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 22:50, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Passing now, looks much better than when I first started reviewing three weeks ago. Great job working on this. ~ KN2731 {talk · contribs} 04:32, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! I really appreciate it! ChessEric (talk · contribs) 04:50, 2 July 2022 (UTC)