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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 03:30, 7 March 2009 [1].

1998 Comfrey – St. Peter tornado outbreak[edit]

Nominator(s): WxGopher
previous FAC (01:29, 22 August 2008)

I nominated this article for Featured Article status last year, and I believe that I've addressed the main concerns from that candidacy. I feel like this is a well-referenced and complete article and am looking forward to your comments. WxGopher (talk) 04:11, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. Some Issues that I notice, hope this helps:
  • Use of unexplained jargon in the lead section: "an F4 that hit the town of Comfrey, Minnesota, an F3 that hit St. Peter, Minnesota, and an F2 that hit Le Center, Minnesota. Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter". You should explain what an F4 or F3 is. When I see F4, I think fighter jet, and that's confusing. Simply saying rated F4 on the Fujita scale would help clarify.
  • Well, F4 is linked to Fujita, and the list is preceded by "was caused by three tornadoes—", so I think the context helps establish what F#'s are referring to (people unfamiliar with the Fujita scale will think some type of tornado, and click on F4 for further information). I think the current wording balances clarity with succinctness; if it's absolutely necessary to explain further, perhaps "one rated F4 that hit..."? BuddingJournalist 16:21, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I find some of the wording awkward, and I would probably rewrite the whole lead to make it both more accessible to laymen, and more readable.
  • I'm not sure if it's appropriate to this case, but many featured articles on meteorological events have sections on the preparations.
  • I find the article somewhat Minnesota-centric. The entire Historical perspective section only talks about Minnesota history, what about the tornadoes in Wisconsin? Cool3 (talk) 16:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I will take a look at the lead again.
  • The Tropical systems are the articles that have preperation sections, because you know they are coming days ahead of time. Tornadoes are very localized and impossible to predict for any given location more than a few minutes in advance, so there is no notable prepation for them.
  • For it being Minnesota-centric, that's because 99.9% of the impact of this event was felt in Minnesota. At first, the article only mentioned Minnesota, it was only later that I noticed that Wisconsin did have 2 (minimal impact) tornadoes, so I decided to mention those as well. As far as historical context, these tornadoes were not notable for Wisconsin like they were for Minnesota. Between 1950 - 2008, I found that Wisconsin has had about 25 tornadoes in this timeframe, and about 20 of them were stronger than these two. Meanwhile, Minnesota only had I think around 5-6 tornadoes in this timeframe, so the 14 that touched down in this one nearly tripled the previous total. WxGopher (talk) 22:55, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I did re-word the lead a little bit, let me know if that seems better. WxGopher (talk) 04:25, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
    • Some type of link for "favorable upper-level dynamics"?
    • "Over $235 million in damage was recorded" This wasn't clear to me whether this referred to the damage caused by the overall tornado outbreak or the supercell discussed in the previous sentence. If the former, perhaps a paragraph break might be helpful?
    • Think about your reader audience. Will non-Americans know what "Twin Cities NWS" means? Introduce abbreviations such as NWS before using them (in the lead, National Weather Service is mentioned). Link Twin Cities.
    • "Early on Sunday March 29" Early = what?
    • "[g]iven strength of vertical shear profile..." Lots of unlinked jargon in this quotation.
    • Prose is OK; at times it's rather pedestrian, and I spotted little errors (especially puzzling was the lack of punctuation for possessives) here and there. Give the article a proofread. BuddingJournalist 16:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks, I'll try to address your comments. The one thing I can make now, is the "g]iven strength of vertical shear profile" is a direct quote that was published by by the Meteorologists issuing the advisories. Here is the text leading up to this: Just before 12:00 pm, the Storm Prediction Center issued a mesoscale discussion stating that "[g]iven strength of vertical shear profiles... When you see it that way; that is it a quote from their advisory, does that make more sense? I don't want to re-write the actual quote, since then it wouldn't be a quote. I thought about putting the the wiki-quotations in but I wasn't sure if such a small amount of text would qualify for that. Otherwise, do you think that there should be some kind of other explanation in there? WxGopher (talk) 22:55, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Didn't quite follow you here. I was just hoping for some wikilinks of technical terms in the quotation. BuddingJournalist 15:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think I addressed the rest of your concerns, with the exception of upper-level dynamics. I agree that should be linked to something, I'm trying to figure out the best way to do that. Except for the proof-reading. I see that you made a bunch of edits, did you fix what was concerning you, or was there more? Thanks, WxGopher (talk) 04:25, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I fixed what I saw up until the point I stopped reading (I didn't read the entire article). The errors that I encountered made me think that a proofread of the entire article might be helpful. BuddingJournalist 15:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • From what I can tell, most of the technical terms should be linked in some manner. Although a term like upper-level dynamics is kind of an all-encompassing thing, so there is not a direct link for that. I tried to do something that made sense though. WxGopher (talk) 02:06, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments -

  • Newspapers titles in the references should be in italics. If you're using {{cite news}}, use the work field for the title of the paper, and the publisher field for the name of the actual company that publishes the paper.
  • Per the MOS, link titles in the references shouldn't be in all capitals, even when they are in the original.
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:47, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Done. WxGopher (talk) 03:41, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - shouldn't the title be 1998 Comfrey–St. Peter tornado outbreak; i.e., the en-dash is not spaced? An em-dash wouldn't work in the title. Sceptre (talk) 15:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    This was discussed in the previous FAC, here is the reasoning for the current title: Comment – Please move the article to 1998 Comfrey – St. Peter tornado outbreak and correct the instances of the name in the article; the en dash should be spaced because the second item it connects (St. Peter) has a space. Right now, the dash appears to connect Comfrey with St., which is bad style. WxGopher (talk) 16:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    The current title is correct, per MoS. –Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 17:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree that the current title is correct, per WP:DASH and per previous discussion. The junction is not Comfrey to St., rather Comfry to St. Peter. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:27, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ref comment -- Errors found using WP:REFTOOLS.

  • {{cite web|title = Event Record Details – Lonsdale tornado|publisher = NCDC|date = March 29, 1998|url = http://www4.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-win/wwcgi.dll?wwevent~ShowEvent~325620|accessdate = 2008-05-15}} | Multiple refs contain this content, a named reference should be used instead--TRUCO 21:43, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reference formatting found up to speed.--TRUCO 01:36, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments for now.
    • All damage figures should indicate they are 1998 USD, and they also need a conversion to 2008 (or 2009) USD.
    • I think the Fujita scale should be mentioned in the lede, but that's up to you.
    • You might want to check with someone else, but I'm pretty sure per WP:MOSNUM that the first usage of any numerical units, they should be Wikilinked.
    • I think the meteorological synopsis should be explained better. First, what was the origin of the "surface-based low pressure area" (and what is that - no link?)? I think the acronym "CAPE" should be spelled out, as it makes more sense, to me at least. The last sentence of the met. synopsis is confusing, in regards to the two wind speeds. I think "respectively" should be added somewhere in there.
    • Watch for unit consistency. It looks weird to see "two miles (3 km)". Also, watch out for unit rounding. If one unit is rounded (150 miles), the other unit should be rounded to the nearest ten (241 km).
    • "The F4 tornado that struck Comfrey is also the strongest tornado ever measured" - little quibble, but tornado windspeeds aren't measured. They're estimated, based on damage.
    • Ref #59 says " March 29, 1998", but the event report was from 2005.
    • Why is this link in see also? 2006 Dakota–Minnesota tornado outbreak
  • ♬♩ Hurricanehink (talk) 03:58, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Added the years to the infobox. Is this to where you were referring, or were there other spots?
  • Fujita scale has been mentioned.
  • Low pressure area is linked earlier in the article.
  • For CAPE, I can see that both ways. People who do not know what it is may understand it better if it's spelled out, however, even though it may sound jargony, I don't think I've ever seen it spelled out before, unless I'm looking in a glossary. CAPE is the way to which it's reffered. Does it help that it's linked?
  • The meteorological synopsis is tough. It's difficult to get too in-depth without it becoming just a mass of scientific terms. So what I tried to do is hit on the major points without telling too much. If there are any more examples of parts you think should be cleaned up, I can try to do that.
  • For the F4 tornado, you are correct. I re-worded that to make it more clear.
  • Ref is fixed.
  • The for 2006 tornado outbreak, the reason why I put there in there was because it was another large tornado that was just a couple miles from the tornado that hit St. Peter. I can remove it though if that is too far off-topic.
  • Will look into the rounding, and linking units.
Thanks, WxGopher (talk) 05:21, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think I've addressed most of your concerns, Hurricanehink. The only thing that I didn't really touch on was the meteorological synopsis, per my reason above. Let me if if there are any other comments. thanks! WxGopher (talk) 17:25, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]


SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:33, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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