Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Severe weather/Archive 4

Mobile Doppler radar wind speed estimates
Are speeds taken by mobile Dopplers given as ranges or...? Take May 3, 1999; the winds were estimated at 301 +/- 20 mph. Is that a range of what the speed at that given part of the tornado at that given time was, or does this mean something else? Dustin ( talk ) 05:42, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Any kind of instrumentation will be able to measure a parameter within a certain tolerance (like a thermistor being able to measure temperature accurately within a degree or two Farenheit). If your source is saying that the measured (by mobile Doppler radar) tornado wind speeds were 301 mph +/- 20 mph, then the real, observed wind speeds could have actually been between 281-321 mph. Guy1890 (talk) 06:00, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * So that means that the maximum winds at that single time and location were probably somewhere between 281 and 321 mph? I have heard of speeds from more recent tornadoes which have far smaller ranges than that (e.g. 10 instead of 40). Am I correctly understanding this? If I am right, then on tornado records, that would mean that some ranges overlap with each other. Assuming that I was correct there, just to give an example off the top of my mind, the winds on May 3, 1999 in the tornado near Bridge Creek were somewhere from as low as 281 to as high as 321 mph, and the winds of the tornado on May 31, 2013 were simply > 295 mph; how would we deal with an issue such as this? Dustin  ( talk ) 23:55, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * "So that means that the maximum winds at that single time and location were probably somewhere between 281 and 321 mph?" Yes.
 * "I have heard of speeds from more recent tornadoes which have far smaller ranges than that (e.g. 10 instead of 40)." Different methods of measurement have different tolerances. My understanding is that, even during recent times, not anywhere near all tornado wind speed estimates are derived from actual Doppler radar data (mobile or not). One of reasons behind the Enhanced Fujita scale not having a defined top wind speed for tornadoes is that it's really not known how high winds speeds can get on planet Earth during extreme weather. You really can't compare wind estimates made under the old scale with the EF-scale. Guy1890 (talk) 06:15, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Who (or which bot) determines the quality scale of an article?
I started expanding and polishing (aka adding references and correcting dead links) the article on the ESSL, the European sister-organisation of the NSSL. I just saw that according to Talk:European_Severe_Storms_Laboratory the article is rated start. My question: Who (or which bot) determines the quality scale of an article?

Furthermore: Can someone of you guys have a look at the ESSL-page and comment on it please?

Last but not least: How do I join a wiki-project? Hou710 (talk) 15:52, 3 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Each Wikipedia Project has a set of guidelines for how articles that fall under its purview should be rated. I'm not aware of any bots that go around doing that work for us. You can ask that an article be re-assessed (like basically you did above) or you could even try & do it yourself, if you are familiar enough with a Project's guidelines & the article in question isn't rated too highly.
 * You can join a Wikipedia Project simply by adding your name to a list of active members. I'm also not aware of any other Projects that have more strict rules for joining their Projects. Guy1890 (talk) 20:41, 3 July 2014 (UTC)