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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Chlod (talk | contribs) at 02:31, 18 October 2025 (→MOS:SANDWICH issues with most tropical cyclone articles - move track map to the infobox?: Reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Project notes

I just created this wikiproject, after several months of contemplating doing so. I hope everyone working on hurricane articles will get involved. I went ahead and wrote a bunch of guidelines, basically based on current practices...naturally since this is something I just wrote it doesn't necessarily represent community consensus and needs to be discussed. That discussion should probably go here for now...although eventually we may make these pages a little more structured. For a general TODO list, see the "tasks" item on the project page. Jdorje 23:17, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

FARC for Effects of Hurricane Isabel in Delaware

I have nominated Effects of Hurricane Isabel in Delaware for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.

Requested move at Talk:TropicaI Depression Nine (2025)#Requested move 27 September 2025

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:TropicaI Depression Nine (2025)#Requested move 27 September 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. DCAllStar (talk) 23:23, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: add the yearly Weather of YYYY and Tropical cyclones in YYYY to the button bars

Per a recent discussion, I realized that a lot of storm articles link articles like Weather of 2025 and Tropical cyclones in 2025, since they wouldn't be directly linked elsewhere in the article. I propose that these sorts of articles get added to the Template:Hurricane season bar, to be added alongside the timeline. The button bars appear in thousands of articles, so if this gets approved, someone technical is going to have to implement it to make sure nothing gets broken. Parts of the template allow for "List of storms" and "Statistics", which were types of article that used to exist (as in the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season) but have since been merged. I believe both of these attributes should be changed and replaced with weather by year (which has individual yearly articles going back to 2000) and tropical cyclones by year (which has yearly articles going back to 1991). ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 21:22, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:SANDWICH issues with most tropical cyclone articles - move track map to the infobox?

Jpuxfrd (talk · contribs) recently published Tropical Storm Alvin (2025). Like most articles, it has an infobox with an image in the top-right, and then a track map on the left side in the met history section (which is usually the first main section of the article). As part of the article approval process, the user was reminded that the text shouldn't be squeezed, but that's pretty much the default for most tropical cyclone articles. MOS:SANDWICH clearly says "a­void sand­wich­ing text be­tween two im­ages hor­i­zon­tally op­po­site each other; or be­tween an im­age and an in­fo­box, nav­i­ga­tion tem­plate, or sim­i­lar."

The easiest solution is to ignore the MOS, which is what the project has been doing since the policy was established. The more proper solution would be a more permanent fix. What about moving the track map to the infobox? That is along the lines of what already happens in the season sections, and, incidentally, on the French Wikipedia. Some articles might have to have their images moved around, but there is always the option for a gallery if there are a lot of images available (but no space). I noticed a recent back-and-forth on Hurricane Hazel, which incidentally is also about image placement and sandwiching, so it's something we all need to be more aware of. Any thoughts? ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 18:30, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd support merge into infobox. It'd fulfill similar role to mapframes or pushpin maps in like place infoboxes. grapesurgeon (seefooddiet) (talk) 19:05, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose as the current issue seems to be coming from users shoving too many other images into the Met history. In fact, in most cases that would actually make the sandwiching worse as a good chunk of storms don’t have long enough leads and white space becomes another issue as well. Users just need to limit the amount of images they insert into the MH and use the clear template when appropriate and not write short summaries in there as well. I see absolutely no reason to change it. MarioProtIV (talk/contribs) 20:01, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@MarioProtIV: the problem is the sandwiching that exists in every article except the ones with at least three paragraphs of met history. I picked Hurricane Francelia at random, and there is sandwiching. The problem isn't the number of images in the met history, it's that so many articles have sandwiching in the first place, which goes against the MOS. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 20:04, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I still concur the proposal would make things worse. And why is it only now suddenly an issue? Since the start of the project I can’t seem to recall any instance where there were complaints. This just seems to be an arbitrary issue that’s arisen from MH’s that are written too short, which if that is the case, questions whether the storm can fit into the season page (unless the impacts are significant). And if there were impacts some of the are needlessly bloated (and not too significant) where it can easily be trimmed down. MarioProtIV (talk/contribs) 20:15, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can we get like a mockup of how this would look? That follows the current infobox style and not the French one? I'm not a rules guy or anything but if it looks better than the current way we do things I think we should do it. Side note, I might point out that whether Francelia and other pages have sandwiching depends on which style of page you use. I only ever use the vector legacy, but the sandwiching doesn't seem to be there as much on the newer style. MCRPY22 (talk) 20:19, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here you go for Francelia - looks like it's already an option to also add the track. Here is what Alvin looks like. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 20:38, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I still don’t like that idea and the fact it makes both images smaller isn’t really a positive - there was a whole discussion on collage infoboxes for TCs and the general thought there before it went silent it seems was it’s moreso a negative and the infobox image should always be of the cyclone itself. I still believe this issue has mostly come from short summaries of MH, in which that case can be expanded upon which isn’t a negative, since it doesn’t hurt to detail it more to newer readers who may not have as much as an understanding on tropical cyclones like we do. The storm path template allows the size of the image to be modified, which is basically an alternative to this without introducing new problems, IMO. MarioProtIV (talk/contribs) 20:45, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But it would basically be what it's like in the sections for season articles, having them side by side. If users want to see a larger image of the storm, they can always click on it. And there can always be a gallery of satellite images, such as what appears in Hurricane Alex (2016). The problem isn't about MH summaries being short or not. It's the sandwiching that happens in a ton of articles. As for collages, I'm still not sure about them, but having the satellite image and track map next to each other looks right to me, since it's not overcrowding the beginning of the article. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 21:53, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I gotta disagree here, having the image and track map right next to each other looks pretty bad to me. Also we gotta put the legend for the track map somewhere. The french version with the track at the bottom was ok, but not having them side-by-side like that. MCRPY22 (talk) 22:14, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The season page does it like that because we can’t squeeze the track in the storm’s section, of which there are multiple. When a storm has its own page, the infobox (and WP:WPTC/IMG as well) agree on a satellite image for the main image, because we can write a whole lot more about that storm in its own page rather then make the season section way too long or big. The French wiki’s idea would not bode well here because of whitespace issues, particularly for those using the vector legacy skin (like I do). Even so, those with shorter leads on the newer skin might also have whitespace issues with track images attached at the bottom of the infobox. As we’ve practically have WP:IAR for this for the last 15-20 years, no big complaints have come about saying “oh we must conform to this” and many of the FA/GAs in this topic have not addressed the track image placement as a problem (IMO, one of the biggest reasons not to change anything). If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I understand change can be good, but I believe in this case, we’re creating a problem out of what boils down to a style recommendation, not an explicit rule. I don’t have problems with collages further down the article like Alex 2016, I was moreso referring to the main image someone sees when they first open the page. MarioProtIV (talk/contribs) 22:40, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looks broke to me...I would be for better ways to mitigate this. I think several ways to display the track would add flexibility. I'm thinking along the lines on how NRHP can be incorporated into Template:Infobox building as an extension. – The Grid (talk) 01:00, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On a solely template-related note, the track map being put next to the satellite image is a hold out from {{Infobox tropical cyclone small}}, which I originally planned to also replace with {{Infobox weather event}} before realizing that the smaller infobox was already compliant with existing infobox standards. It's trivial to add another sub-box to the weather event infobox for the track map; one just has to decide where it's supposed to go. Chlod (say hi!) 02:31, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And why is it only now suddenly an issue? Since the start of the project I can’t seem to recall any instance where there were complaints. This isn't a strong argument. Plenty of bad practices that stick around for a long time, doesn't make it less bad grapesurgeon (seefooddiet) (talk) 23:34, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Netural - I think moving the trackmap into the infobox might remove some of the wowness of certain TC pictures and make the infobox cramped, but that could be a good thing as it might solve some of the silly edits that we have all seen over which image should go into the infobox.Jason Rees (talk) 23:31, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: this would clutter the infobox. The image would be harder to understand since the legend would be missing. A better solution is to expande the lead when possible. When done right, it eliminates the issue completely. If expansion doesn't completely eliminate the issue, Template:Clear can be used at the end of short leads. There will be whitespace but the actual content isn't affected. Columbia719 (talk) 00:01, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The clear template will need to be applied on numerous articles to fix the sandwiching then. grapesurgeon (seefooddiet) (talk) 01:05, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a problem. Columbia719 (talk) 01:07, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Imo it's ugly; I try to basically never use clear. None of my writings use it. Think there's an arbitrary attachment here to an avoidable MOS vio, and the MOS has the guideline for a reason that's being ignored. grapesurgeon (seefooddiet) (talk) 01:11, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can you please provide the line that says MOS discourages the clear template? Columbia719 (talk) 01:14, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t think it’s against the MOS having the clear, but I think having the track map in the infobox looks better than too much white space. See Tropical Storm Alvin (2025) which has too much white space on my screen on my home computer, but not when I view it on my smartphone. Hurricanehink mobile (talk) 01:22, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Portions of the infobox could be made collapsible instead. The clear template should be used as a last resort. Columbia719 (talk) 01:24, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It would need to be unfurled by default though with the option to collapse it though. This is probably the only solution I would support here for fixing sandwiching issues without messing up the look as some have alluded to in regards to the main image. MarioProtIV (talk/contribs) 02:07, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, only the first half of my comment applied to your comment. Clear isn't in MOS, but I think most would agree its use should be a last resort. I went on a tangent by referring to sandwiching being defended by others in this thread. grapesurgeon (seefooddiet) (talk) 01:27, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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