Wikipedia:Peer review/May 2009 Southern Midwest derecho/archive1

May 2009 Southern Midwest derecho

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I think it sounds a little but to "jargany" in quite a few places. I am starting to think about bring this up for GAN, but I would just feel a tad more comfortable if someone outside of the meteorology Wikiprojects looked at it and reviewed it.

Thanks! Southern IllinoisSKYWARN^{Got something to say?} 01:57, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Interesting article on a topic I had not heard of before, here are some suggestions for improvement with an eye to GAN.

• The lead seems too short for an article of this length. WP:LEAD says it can be up to 4 paragraphs long, and for this article I would expect at leats 2 and probably 3 paragraphs.
• Since the lead is supposed to be a summary of the whole article, my rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way. I would also look at the table of tornados - I would at least mention every state in which this caused tornados in the lead
• Introduce an abbreviation after its first use in the lead - so "mesoscale convective vortex (MCV)"
• WP:LEAD also says to avoid linking words in the bold title of the article (Midwest). So the first sentence could be The May 2009 Southern Midwest derecho was an extreme progressive derecho and mesoscale convective vortex (MCV) event that struck southeastern Kansas, southern Missouri, and southwestern Illinois in the Midwestern United States on May 8, 2009.[9]
• The capitalization of geographic regions seems unusual (though it is done consistently). Southeastern Kansas, Southern Missouri, and Southwestern Illinois - is there any reason why it is not southeastern Kansas, southern Missouri, and southwestern Illinois? Even the title of the article suffers from this - why not "southern Midwest"? These are descriptive adjectives - it is not like there is a state called "Southeastern Kansas" or an official region (that I am aware of). Adjectives are generally not capitalized.
• Speaking of WP:Jargon I had no idea what a derecho is and imagine most readers will also not know the term - I know it is linked, but I think it would be worth giving a brief phrase expalining it in the lead and a sentence or two in the body of the article - see WP:PCR
• In Meteorological synopsis I would give the year at least once (I know it is in the lead, but sometimes people skip around in articles)
• The one paragraph of Meteorological synopsis is also quite long - could it be split? Perhaps start the new paragraph at The Storm Prediction Center issued two "particularly dangerous situation" severe thunderstorm watches[13][14] and a vividly worded tornado watch,...?
• MOS Says to spell out primary units (nmi)
• This may following the meteorology Wikiprojects style guides, so if it is, it is OK, but why is the table of tornados in the middle of the article? I think that articles almost always read better if the text comes first and the table(s) follow that at the end of the article.
• There are several places where conversions to metric untis need to be given - one example A woman was killed in New Albany, Kansas when her mobile home was blown forty feet off of its foundation.[8] The {{convert}} template does a nice job of this. I also note that the MOS says to use numbers if greater than 10, so 40 feet (12 m). There are other places this issue needs to be fixed.
• The proper link is to Kentucky Route 52 - Kentucky Route 1295 is still a red link, but please note the proper capitalization
• What about a large "Effects" section with subsections on "Kansas and southwestern Missouri", "Southeastern Missouri and southwestern Illinois", and "Elsewhere"?
• The Southeastern Missouri and southwestern Illinois effects paragraph is also quite long and could be split.
• The flooding section is oddly organized - a one sentence paragraph on floods in St Louis MO and KY, then a paragraph on KS, then back to MO. WHy not combine the MO paragraphs?

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:01, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

• Just one quick comment regarding the NCDC refs: even though Stuart Hinson is listed as the person to contact for problems/questions, I doubt he actually authored all of the reports himself, so I'm sure about citing him as the |author=. Haven't read through the article yet. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 03:39, 22 April 2010 (UTC)