Talk:List of notable Florida hurricanes from 1900-1960

Confusion about Overseas Railroad[edit]

I've been correcting articles that incorrectly refer to the 1935 hurricane as destroying the railroad and killing "army workers" who were building the railroad. This article incorrectly refers to a 1906 hurricane as the one that destroyed the railroad. In fact, the railroad didn't being operating until 1912, so it couldn't have been destroyed in 1906, and it was almost bankrupt by 1935, parts of the Overseas Highway were already in operation, and the World War I veterans who were living in relief camps in the Keys were working on highway construction and other projects like mosquito control, not on building the railroad. The 1935 storm did hasten the demise of the Overseas Railroad (or Overseas Railway), but it was already in trouble when the storm struck.

Check the 1906 Monthly Weather Review. On page 9, it will tell you that, in exact words: "The storm caught most of the several hundred laborers and mechanics of the railway extention in houseboats and other clumsy craft moored to piling as their living quarters." It goes on to say: "The loss of life among these men was about 135." Thus I firmly stand by my previous statement.

E. Brown, Hurricane enthusiast - Squawk Box 02:33, 17 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I left a reply on your talk page, but for those who read here, I'll explain. I wrote:

This article incorrectly refers to a 1906 hurricane as the one that destroyed the railroad. In fact, the railroad didn't being operating until 1912, so it couldn't have been destroyed in 1906.

You replied with facts about railroad workers being killed. They aren't mutually exclusive, Dude. Railroad workers were killed in '06, but that storm didn't destroy the railroad. OTOH, '35 storm did destroy the railroad, but the workers it killed were WWI vets living in relief camps and evacuated by train, not "railroad workers." Hope that clears it up. DavidH 03:46, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

Gulf of Mexico Hurricane[edit]

This section was removed from the main article because the storm it describes was not very notable in Florida, but was more notable elsewhere. It is other wise a well written section, so I am posting it here.

Gulf of Mexico Hurricane[edit]

September 9, 1919

Category 4 at landfall

Drowning All in Sight

One of the deadliest storms in US history formed just off the Lesser Antilles on September 2. The storm quickly strengthened as it tracked across the Bahamas and would become a Category 4 hurricane. At the same time, the storm would make its way on a direct path for the Florida Keys and it would be one of the few hurricanes to directly hit Key West. Flooding was immense and the winds caused considerable damage on land in the Keys. The minimum central pressure when it reached the Keys was recorded at 927 mbar, which makes this storm the sixth most intense hurricane to affect the United States. The worst destruction was still to come though: starting on September 10, one by one, ten ships sunk just west of the Florida coast near the Dry Tortugas, where more than 500 people were killed. With no Hurricane Hunters or satellites back in those days, there was a constant struggle to find the center of the hurricane, and at times the storm was actually "lost". Eventually on September 14, the storm would make a final landfall on the other side of the Gulf in Corpus Christi, Texas, the destruction continued and another 287 were confirmed dead and many more unaccounted for. The damage was estimated at $22 million, and the final death toll is estimated around 900, which makes the 1919 storm one of the five deadliest in US history.

See Also: 1919 Florida Keys Hurricane

Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde 22:35, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Cool series[edit]

I decided to merge this two article into a big series, so I put that template below the article. If you dislike the form of the template, feel free to modify its format; but please do not eliminate it. Oh.. I also put the Hurricane Donna link in the proper section juan andrés 00:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article is formatted to have links to main articles after their storm's respective sections. That way, people reading just one section can see that there is another article that may give them more information. -- §Hurricane ERIC § archive -- my dropsonde 03:39, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Todo[edit]

The writing is pretty poor and very dense. Needs pictures, wikification in some areas, and better use of paragraphs. I'm not sure this article should exist. Jdorje 07:37, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I spent a LOT of time researching this article and I have often been commended on my writing skills. I don't see how you can call it 'poor writing'. Grammer and puntuation are good. Spelling is good. Sentence structure is good, and paragraph structure is ok. I don't appreciate your willingness to insult other people's writing so freely. You seem to full disregard the time and effort spent to put these articles together. I do agree that more paragraph breaks and some pictures should be added. -- §Hurricane ERIC § archive -- my dropsonde 03:46, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The research is good (it has formed the basis for several full storm articles that were split off). But don't be so sensitive about criticism! The writing is mediocre in my opinion. Worst is the paragraph structure: one 40-line paragraph for the Okeechobee hurricane? Who could be expected to read such a thing? Elsewhere the wording is poor:

"The hurricane formed...and quickly became a hurricane." How could it have become a hurricane if the hurricane had already formed?
"Today that would equal about 8 and a half billion dollars." When is today? "8 and a half" - don't you mean "8.5" or "Eight and a half"?
"Sustained winds were 155 mph at landfall just south of Fort Lauderdale" - this has no source given and contradicts what it says in that article.
"Sustained winds of 138 mph" - no hurricane has sustained winds of 138 mph; they are always rounded to the nearest 5. I know you're converting from knots, but you can't add significant digits by doing so.
"Hurricane force winds were measured over 120 miles away from the center in all directions" - no source is given for this statement, and I believe it is incorrect.
"The "Royal" Visit Right Downtown" - what does this even mean? The little "catch phrases" given to each storm are very non-neutral IMO.

Lack of sources is a general problem here. This wouldn't be such a problem if the text wasn't so detailed. But some storms just have way too much detail.

All of this is fixable, and isn't the reason I say this article might not deserve to exist. The reason I say that is that everything in this article is duplicated - both with the season articles, and with the storm articles (every article covered here should have a storm article). Do we really need to duplicate it in a third place? And if so, shouldn't we have an article like this for every state? Should I start work on Historic North Carolina hurricanes?

Jdorje 04:05, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The stuff on the Fort Lauderdale hurricane (like the one making landfall with 155 mph winds and hurricane force winds 120 miles from the center) came from the Monthy Weather Review. Also, I'm human, I do make the occational typo. I don't see how a few typos make this mediocre writing. You might as well come and tell me that the article that I spent a month researching and writing sucks. Don't you see how stuff like that can be offensive? You seem to be very unappreciative of other people's work. Your argument about this article being a duplicate is flawed. A large number of articles duplicated it, not the other way around. I chose Florida, because it's the most hurricane-battered state in the country. We don't need an article like this for every state, don't be ridiculous. I don't think I would be opposed to ones for North Carolina and Texas though. The "catch phrases" are plenty neutral and I try to make them encyclopedic (informative) and also excite the mind and intrigue people. Who says imagery can't be used in an encyclopedia, so long as it is encyclopedic? -- §Hurricane ERIC§ archive 22:14, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to argue, I just want you to make the article better! Use of paragraphs and the addition of references would go a long way. Jdorje 20:59, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was never against that, in fact, I believe I said that I supported those particular recommendations. See my first rant.

"I do agree that more paragraph breaks and some pictures should be added."

My main grievance was that I felt that you were being to harsh with you criticizm of the article. I also didn't feel that the writing was poor. Now, arguing never solved anything; since we both agree that more references and paragraphs should be added, let's go ahead and do that and deal with the stuff we disagree on later. -- §Hurricane ERIC§ archive 00:39, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I added paragraph breaks and some pics (all but one unique to this article). I need to do a fact check of Hurricane Donna, I'm not sure all those facts and figures are right. -- §Hurricane E RIC§^Damagesarchive 02:37, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work so far. While you're at it, I think the donna article itself needs a fact check...try getting Hink to do a rewrite of it. — jdorje (talk) 04:21, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'll review the Donna article and if the situation is bad enough that it deserves a rewrite, I'll ask Hink if he's up to the job. Otherwise, I'll make the nessesary changes myself. I'd like to get the section on this article squared away first. Unfortunately, I am not in the best of health right now, but I'll do what I can. Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated. -- §Hurricane E RIC§^Damagesarchive 01:38, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Made small changes, trying to clean up the text and remove inconsistencies, in Labor Day and Donna. I'm most familiar with the Keys storms. BTW, think this article serves a good purpose; thanks to the original author for creating it. DavidH 00:27, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm flattered David. I spent a lot of time researching it and that means a lot to me. My main concern with the Donna section is that I think I may have done some assuming on a few of those facts instead of using facts with concrete evidence. For example, I think the New Jersey damage stuff is largely inferred using logical reasoning rather that material reports. -- §Hurricane E RIC§^Damagesarchive 02:34, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. I know what you mean about inferred data. I have to verify some other things about Donna (did the eye really hit Key Vaca, or was it Duck Key or Knight's Key?), but I don't have the Donna book handy. I worked for a newspaper headquartered in Marathon (in the early 90s) and they had put out a special book on Donna; the pictures show the area absolutely clobbered, though a few key structures, like the small lighthouse at the Whale Harbor Inn, stood through it. There's also an incredible tale of U.S. Coastguardsmen riding out Donna on the Alligator Reef Light, an iron lighthouse anchored over the reef. BTW, don't I see you also at Storm2K? I'm "Recurve" there. DavidH 04:07, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, I don't have an account at Storm2K. Anyway, I'll have to check up on the New Jersey damage. ~~Does your book have anything on the east coast damage? If so could you fact check that for me?~~ I'm not sure all that stuff is right. -- §Hurricane E RIC§^Damagesarchive 03:44, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind. I fixed it. The Donna section has been corrected and I've upgraded this article to a B, I think it deserves it now. -- §Hurricane E RIC§^Damagesarchive 04:08, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okeechobee section[edit]

I cleaned this section up. Some notable changes:

I renamed it from Lake Okeechobee to Okeechobee Hurricane. I have no particular opinion on the name (see the talk page in the hurricane article) but the name must be consistent with the article's name.
I removed the wrong information about 1,000-2,000 deaths in puerto rico.
I added some information about the even greater catastrophe in the leeward islands.
I fixed the landfall wind speed (which was completely wrong).
I removed some completely inadequate numbers: "thousands of tons of water" covering "hundreds of acres". The true numbers are much more staggering. Floodwaters covered hundreds of square miles. At a depth of five feet (conservative!) that would be hundreds of millions or possibly billions of tons of water.
I also just generally condensed it.

— jdorje (talk) 05:19, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's most commonly refered to as the Lake Okeechobee Hurricane of the San Felipe Hurricane. -- §Hurricane E RIC§^Damagesarchive 18:55, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Copyedit[edit]

I did a copyedit of the article, including some things I imagine you don't agree with. But I'll start with the simple stuff:

One consistent problem is that the article goes into too much detail on impact of storms outside of Florida. This article is about Florida, so that's obviously what the focus should be. I think this means we need to separate the deaths and (if possible) damage and make it clear exactly how much was caused in Florida. Every storm gives a death toll but for many of them only a few of those deaths occurred in florida.

At first I wondered why the detail had been removed, but I see your point. DavidH 16:55, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Every section *must* have a "see also"/"main article" link. I prefer "main article" because, well, that's what it is. I also prefer having this at the top because that is standard. For storms that don't have their individual articles the season article suffices as the main article. The season article should always give the most comprehensive coverage of any storm that doesn't itself have an article, so this is appropriate. However in many cases this article has more about the storms than the season article does (which brings up the question of sources and derivitive knowledge, but that's another issue).
I removed some overly emotional non-encyclopedic phrases. Yes this is supposed to be a story but telling things in a straightforward way carries its own weight by letting the reader be impressed by the raw information being conveyed.
I removed some wrong information like "The storm caused $50 million in damages. Today that would be $18 billion." This is a wrong conversion and no doubt based on the adjusted-for-population values. If you want to include it that's okay, but you have to make it clear what the information means (it's how much damage an identical storm would cause if it struck today). Including the adjusted-for-inflation damages would also be good I think.

— jdorje (talk) 04:56, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, I do like the links to "main article" at the top rather than bottom of each section. DavidH 17:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't include the links to seasonal article because main article links should always link to an article that may give more information than what is given here. This article may go into more detail about some of these storms than the seasonal articles do. I also don't see why the links are a must have if the storm has no article. I did try to focus on Florida but I can't just ignore the damage it did to other countries. And before you just start removing facts, make sure that they are in the storm's main article because some of it may be more useful there than here. The fact about Ivan cutting off Jeanne's stearing currents for example should probably be added to the Jeanne article if it's not already there. -- §Hurricane E RIC§^Damagesarchive 01:40, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jdorje, you removed a lot of extensive research. You need to think about the consequences before you start removing things that people spent hours researching. Also, in one of the sections I said: "The storm caused $54 million in damage (1945 dollars)." Then you made a note saying "Information wrong: It would equal 8 billion today." Well I'm not talking about today. Note the use of "(1945 dollars)". You might want to read facts and then research them yourself before you say that they're wrong. -- §Hurricane E RIC§^Damagesarchive 01:51, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where I removed information for storms that did not have an article, I merged the information into the season article. I assume the storm articles already have more information than this article; if not then the information needs to be merged in there. In any case since the research had no sources given it is of little long-term use as it will all have to be researched a second time in full to verify the sources. As for the "information wrong" part, what's wrong is that $54 million in 1945 dollars is not $8 billion in "today" dollars; note that I only cut out the "wrong" $8B value not the $54m value. — jdorje (talk) 08:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What are you talking about? The sources are at the bottom of the page. -- §Hurricane E RIC§^Damagesarchive 23:07, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, sources that are not inline are not very useful. Information needs to be verifiable and you can't expect someone to go through the entire external links section to find each piece of data. (This is a problem with all older articles. Adding useful sources generally takes more work than writing the article did in the first place, because you do have to go through all the sources to find every little bit of data.) Anyway, feel free to add back anything, but please include inline sources. — jdorje (talk) 02:34, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That I agree with but don't say that the sources aren't there at all; inline or otherwise, as was implied above. Remember, citations that suck are better than ones that don't exist. -- §Hurricane E RIC§^Damagesarchive 20:45, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, yes, you got me: I just didn't notice the sources at the bottom. Still, sucky citations may still be a reason to add a {{fact}} tag. — jdorje (talk) 03:12, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Start-class[edit]

Have, per Catastrophic Florida hurricanes: 1961-present, relegated this article to Start-class. Mind you, it's not the EXTENSIVENESS of the article that determines the class, it's how it's WRITTEN. – Ch acor 09:12, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article renamed[edit]

Per WP:BOLD, I've moved the article to its current location. It's obviously a list, and "catastrophic" was too POV. "Notable" is still sort of POV, but I can't think of anything better. This article might also be better off being merged into the post-1960 article. – Ch acor 05:07, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I merged this with the List of Florida hurricanes article, seeing as it was nearly duplicate in content. --Hurricanehink (talk) 15:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]