Wikipedia:Notability of individual tornadoes
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On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article. For tornadoes, the event should have continued coverage and significant coverage, while also being relatively impactful.
This notability information page reflects the outcome of a Request for Comment on WikiProject Weather's talk page that took place in December 2024 through February 2025, as well as general unwritten consensus. This notability information page is meant to inform editors on when it is appropriate to send an article on an individual tornado to the merge venue, deletion venue, or even to determine the notability of a tornado draft. This information page is a refined version of a table that was agreed on in the Request for Comment.
Basic criteria
[edit]Individual tornadoes are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in reliable sources and that coverage of the tornado is lasting.[1] Sourcing is the deciding factor for the notability of individual tornadoes; the Fujita (F) or Enhanced Fujita (EF) rating only plays a marginal factor in the notability of a tornado. Tornadoes can be considered notable if:
- The tornado has received significant coverage from reliable sources.
- Continued coverage exists around the tornado, typically six or more months after the event.
- The tornado killed or injured at least one person. While this in itself does not make the tornado notable, tornadoes can get more coverage if they were deadly.
- The tornado caused monetary damage totaling over $200,000 USD (United States Dollars). As with fatalities, monetary damage does not directly make a tornado notable, but damaging tornadoes tend to receive more coverage.[2]
- The tornado significantly damaged a town. While not required for a tornado to be notable, tornadoes that significantly damage a town or several towns are more likely to be notable than those that don't.
Wikipedia criteria
[edit]While some tornadoes may get major coverage, it's important to note that coverage is not the only thing that potentially allows or disallows for individual tornadoes to have articles. Content forks, also known as "CFORKS",[3] have historically been used to merge small tornado articles into sections on their respective tornado outbreak page.[4] Another generally accepted guideline is that a tornado article may be considered notable if the article was recently[5] featured at Did you know, is a Good Article or Featured Article.
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ General consensus is that if a tornado receives coverage 6 or more months after the event, it retains lasting coverage.
- ^ Examples of damaging tornadoes with articles include the 2011 Tuscaloosa–Birmingham tornado and 2011 Joplin tornado.
- ^ Content forking is copying information from one page and pasting it into another. This process is also known as "splitting" and has been used numerous times to write individual tornado articles.
- ^ Examples of CFORK-based tornado Articles for deletion discussions include: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1997 Prairie Dell-Jarrell tornado (kept), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Manila tornado (merged), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2023 Wynne–Parkin tornado (kept), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2024 Sulphur tornado (merged)
- ^ As of May 2025, there is no generally-accepted time frame for "recent".