Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1998 Comfrey – St. Peter tornado outbreak/archive1


 * 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 User:SandyGeorgia 01:29, 22 August 2008.

1998 Comfrey – St. Peter tornado outbreak

 * Nominator(s): WxGopher (talk)

I'm nominating this article for featured article because I feel like it meets FA critera, being comprehensive, well referenced and with proper formatting. It's currently listed as a GA and has undergone a peer review. I look forward to your comments! WxGopher (talk) 20:07, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone  20:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comments Some things I noticed at first glance:
 * A strong area of low pressure combined with a warm front and favorable upper level dynamics combined to produce sixteen tornadoes over the region. "sixteen" &rarr; "16". I see this a couple more times in the article, so just keep in mind only single-digit numbers are spelled out.
 * Some dates are autoformatted, while others are not. Try to be consistent.
 * Do not place left-aligned images directly below second-level (===) headings.
 * I'm concerned about current ref 8, as, although it's cited to two individual facts, it links to the main NCDC storm reports page.
 * Current ref 32 should list the AP as the author, with the Minnesota Daily as the publisher.
 * Otherwise sources look good; links check out with the link checker.
 * I've fixed all these issues, except for ref #8 (which is now 30). I did change one ref to a better page, but for the damage amounts listed by the NCDC for wind and hail, the only way I've found to get those is to do a lookup for those specific events events, there isn't a static URL. Is there a better way I should reference this? WxGopher (talk) 23:47, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Not that I know of. It isn't a huge deal, so it should be fine as it is. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone  23:50, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Support - prose is good in general, a few nitpicks: There may possibly be more that I missed; I just searched for "red-flag" words and phrases in the main text and went over the lead. Nousernamesleft (talk) 22:41, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * "The 14 tornadoes recorded were the most to ever touch down in one day during the month of March. The F4 tornado was the strongest ever recorded in March" - two records for March in a row. Couldn't they somehow be combined?
 * "This event was named the top severe weather event..." - sudden topic change from the last sentence makes this sentence confusing.
 * "Eighty percent of the windows on the campus were shattered, and most of the major buildings on campus sustained at least some damage." - red flag: "some". This could be better worded as "and most of the major buildings on campus sustained damage."
 * Done, The best way I could think of to fix issue #2 was to rearrange the sentences (which probably should've been that way to begin with). Does that look better? WxGopher (talk) 23:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * 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.
 * That said, I am happy to see that en dashes enjoy increasing usage in Wikipedia; as late as last year this article would probably use a hyphen. Waltham, The Duke of 22:01, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Whatever was done to the article name here, the talk page was left in disarray, and the FAC needs to be moved. This change needs to be done correctly and completely, without leaving redlinks everywhere. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:53, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Never mind: I'll just do it all myself. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:55, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * And now the article and talk page have been moved back after I fixed the FAC to the new name. Now it needs an admin to sort it all out; I can no longer fix all the moves over redirects.  Please work with an admin to get it right and get everything in the right place, which includes seven pieces: the FAC name itself, the peer review page, the GA page, the article, the article talk page, the article title on this FAC page, and the FAC listing at the WP:FAC page.   Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 03:01, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ouch. Waltham, The Duke of 08:47, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, it looks like Woody fixed everything now. Thanks, Woody.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:13, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry about creating the confusion there, and thanks for cleaning up after me!  WxGopher (talk) 00:58, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Comments Support (full disclosure - I'm in the MN wikiproject with WXGopher)
 * "CAPE...were 2000 J/kg. " is this high? low?
 * could this be stated better? "As the tornado moved from Murray and into Cottonwood counties,..."
 * "the twister lifted back into the clouds" Does this actually happen or does it dissipate?
 * "a six-year-old boy was killed when his vehicle was overtaken by the tornado." - is there a better way to say this? I pictured a kid driving...
 * "The chapel spire, a campus landmark, was snapped in half. " is mentioned as damage. Can you see if it was repaired for aftermath?
 * Overall looks good. -Ravedave (talk) 05:41, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * - For the CAPE, that is considered moderate. I've mentioned that and provided a ref.
 * - I re-worded this, does it look better now?
 * - Both can happen, a tornado can "skip" and come back down and touch land again, or it can dissipate. In this case, the ref here said that it lifted, so that's what I used in the article.  I've tacked this ref onto this sentence as well.
 * - Re-worded, better?
 * - According this this page (hidden in the caption of the picture of the repaired chapel) the spire is new. Do you think this should be mentioned?   WxGopher (talk) 17:22, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks good. Regarding the spire, if it's worth mentioning in damage shouldn't it be worth mentioning in the aftermath? I guess the real question is 'is it worth mentioning in damage?' What about the other school structures that were destroyed? -Ravedave (talk) 18:52, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I found a note about the spire being replaced and placed this in the aftermath section. WxGopher (talk) 02:08, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments on images
 * Image:MN tornado percent.png - Describing the source of the graph rather than just linking to it would be better. Awadewit (talk) 14:21, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. WxGopher (talk) 14:41, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Rest of images check out fine. Awadewit (talk) 15:03, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment - References have been reviewed by Doibot. -- Meld    shal    42?   19:51, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Oppose—Sorry to come along late. The writing needs a proper massage; can you find someone unfamiliar to do it, please? Here are random samples from the top, showing the need to go through the entire text thoroughly.
 * Have you read MoS on hyphenation? "upper level dynamics". Audit throughout for such double adjectives—there are tons. Seems to be a disease in meteorological articles. Where's you WikiProject? I feel like visiting to make a statement about it. That would save us a lot of trouble at FAC. Try these exercises.
 * "Thirteen of the tornadoes were caused by one parent supercell which traveled approximately 150 miles (241 km) across southern Minnesota during the afternoon hours." So how many parent supercells travelled thus? Five in all, of which you're talking about one? Without a comma preceding, your "which" expresses a subset of supercells—one of many. On this point, I agree with Chicago MOS: use "that" or ", which" to make it clear to yourself and your readers which one is intended. Consider adding "just" before "one", to drive home your meaning (if my assumption is correct).
 * "Over $235 million in damages was reported"—"damage" is not usually countable unless in the legal sense. I've seen certain engineering subfields use it, and I hate it.
 * The, not This outbreak; "this" is too strong a back-reference given what the reader well knows by now.
 * "The 14 tornadoes recorded were the most to ever touch down in one day during the month of March, the F4 tornado was the strongest ever recorded in March, and its 67-mile (108 km) path is the longest continuous-track tornado recorded in Minnesota during any month." Hmmm ... Do we need the first "recorded"? Weren't there 16? I'm totally confused. "the most ever to have touched down" would be the better tense. "was the longest".
 * Good scope and arc for the lead.
 * "the best chance of thunderstorm development was along"—along? Huh? Tony   (talk)  13:22, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comments. I am not as familiar on when to do hyphens vs. dashes, and when, as you are, so I'll try to address that in the next day or two. If you're looking to address a broad weather audience on the hyphen issue, I would suggest WP:Meteorology and WP:Tropical cyclones.  I'll try to fix the issues you brought up, but I did have a couple questions...
 * The reason why I put "recorded" tornadoes was because when a tornado outbreak first occurs, there are "reported", and "official". Most of the time (more so in larger outbreaks) there number of reported tornadoes is much higher than what is eventually deemed official.  I thought that by putting "recorded" in, that would specify that these are the tornadoes that for sure did happen, but if you think that confuses things too much, I'll remove it.  Also there were 16 tornadoes in this outbreak, but 2 of them were in the state of Wisconsin.  The 14 tornadoes in Minnesota are the ones that broke many records for Minnesota only.
 * That's a good reason to use "recorded"; but non-experts won't understand this important meaning. I guess it applies to all such articles, but somewhere it would be nice to point it out, in at least a few of them. A brief footnote? We are, after all, in the business of educating our readers. Tony   (talk)  03:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * For damages, I'm not sure what you mean by "legal", but this damage total is what the National Climatic Data Center has recorded for these tornadoes, so it's the official total the U.S. government uses.  This number is what was based on government survey's, insurance claims, etc, after the event.  Is this good enough or should I try to re-word it?  WxGopher (talk) 04:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This is sound American; Tony is being provincial again. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't mind personal attacks, especially from Anderson, who has blanket permission to say whatever he likes about me. But are you sure US readers wouldn't balk at "you've done a lot of damages to my clothing"? (Uttered to the dry cleaning service.) And if the justification were to imply storm damage of a number of different types, it begs the question as to what they were. Tony   (talk)  03:04, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Only fair, considering how many personal attacks Tony's made on others. But he also misses the differentiation: damage is material injury: houses destroyed, livestock killed, roads torn up and so forth; damages are the cost of it all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:49, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've made some changes here, which addresses most of your issues I believe. Still working on the hyphens though. WxGopher (talk) 01:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm fairly familiar with WP:MOSDASH, so I'll try to take a look at the hyphen usage within the next day. –Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone  01:52, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. –Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone  13:48, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've finished addressing Tony's comments as well. If there are any other examples out there, let me know. thanks! WxGopher (talk) 01:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

←So have you addressed the whole text, not just the issues I raised as examples? Tony  (talk)  03:04, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.