Wikipedia:Peer review/Hurricane Alex (2010)/archive1

Hurricane Alex (2010)

This peer review discussion has been closed.
This article about a hurricane from two months ago is getting close to GA level as we speak.

Thanks, Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 22:05, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: This is rather more detailed than most hurricane articles I've read, and it seems to be very comprehensive. I'm not an expert on hurricanes, so if my points seem a bit trivial or naive, I'm sorry.

• Lead: The last sentence introduces an unnecessary level of specific detail, which I believe would be better in the main body of the article.
• Meteorological history
  • The following sentence is overlong and awkwardly structured: "When Alex was still located over the Yucatan Peninsula, the NHC noted the potential for significant strengthening due to low wind shear and very warm water temperatures, possibly to a major hurricane, or a Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale." My suggestion is a split: "When Alex was still located over the Yucatan Peninsula, the NHC noted a potential for significant strengthening. Because of low wind shear and very warm water temperatures, the possibly existed of a major hurricane at Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale."
  • "By early on June 28..." Ugly: delete the "By".
• Caribbean subsection: combine the two very short paragraphs.
• Western Gulf coast: "Prior to moving ashore, the Brownsville, Texas National Weather Service issued a flood watch for the southernmost region of the state." This reads as though the Weather Service issued a flood watch and then moved ashore. That is not the intended meaning, surely?
• Impact - Caribbean and Central America: "In the Dominican Republic, the rainfall causing flooding that prompted the evacuations of more than 3,000 people, mostly due to swollen rivers." This is not a sentence. Try "caused" for "causing". These regular incidences of wobbly prose indicate the need for a copyedit from an uninvolved hurricane expert - there are a few around.
• Northeastern Mexico
• The phrase "torrential rainfall" in the firat line also occurred in the last line of the previous section, and looks repetitive. Try to rephrase.
• What is "CNA"
• I suppose it's my ignorance, but how does a dam operate at 114% or 124% of maximum capacity?
• Tamaulipas
  • "...a 25-year-old man was rescued from a storm drain in which he had become trapped". Last six words unnecessary.
  • There needs to be consistency through the article in the usage of either "%" or "percent".
• Aftermath: the tendenct to write in very short paragraphs increases as the section progresses.
• References: I haven't checked these for reliability, etc , but I notice that some are incompletely formatted. Refs 1 and 41–44 are the obvious ones.
• A couple of links go to dab pages (use the toolbox top-right of this review to identify, then fix)

Overall this looks thorough, though in need of a prose tidy. The points I have raised above should be taken as samples, not as a complete list, hence the value of a copyedit. I have done a small number of tweaks myself. Brianboulton (talk) 22:14, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I've tried to address most of those issues, except the Aftermath, which will take a bit more time. The dam capacity thing is a bit weird. There are two dam capacity levels: conservation space, which is the water level that can be used for water consumption, and flood control space, which is everything between the top of conservation space and the crest of the dam. That space is reserved for storing excess water during heavy runoff, and such water must be released within a set amount of time. (In Spanish, the two levels are the nivel de avenidas máximo ordinario [NAMO] and the nivel de avenidas máximo extraoridinario [NAME], by the way.) The dam is usually said to be at 100% of capacity when it is at the top of conservation space/NAMO; however, there is still some space available at the top, so readings of 114% and 124% just mean how much excess water there is on the dam. (When the water level exceeds flood control space/NAME, that's when we need to worry about.) I'm not sure how to phrase that into the article without adding lots of unnecessary detail, though. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:51, 14 September 2010 (UTC)