Storm2K Threads With the Highest Post Counts

[kevin]

I'm not really sure where to put it so mods move it to another thread if you deem it to fit better there, but I put too much work into this not to post anything about it . Since Ida was such a busy thread I wanted to see what was the busiest threads were in the history of Storm2k. So I went through the archives for all storms since 2003 and I have the results. Note that storm threads only really started in 2004 and it wasn't until 2006 that threads were made for all storms. So f.e. in 2005 some weaker storms didn't have their own thread. Anyways, in terms of absolute number of posts here's the top 20:

Top 20 busiest threads, number of posts (absolute), 2003 - 2021
01 - Ike - 2008 - 13,504
02 - Fay - 2008 - 13,412
03 - Irma - 2017 - 12,434
04 - Dean - 2007 - 11,653
05 - Matthew - 2016 - 10,909
06 - Gustav - 2008 - 10,390
07 - Irene - 2011 - 9,762
08 - Hermine - 2016 - 9,356
09 - Dorian - 2019 - 9,185
10 - Isaac - 2012 - 8,727
11 - Emily - 2011 - 8,691
12 - Dolly - 2008 - 8,428
13 - Harvey - 2017 - 7,831
14 - Laura - 2020 - 7,829
15 - Ivan - 2004 - 7,020
16 - Isaias - 2020 - 5,665
17 - Wilma - 2005 - 5,625
18 - Chris - 2006 - 5,293
19 - Ida - 2021 - 5,268
20 - Florence - 2018 - 4,992

One thing you immediately notice is that most users here come from Florida. Because any storm headed for Florida, even if it's a TS gets a ton of posts, more than even many MHs. However, this overview could be a bit skewed since there are way more Storm2k users now than f.e. in 2005. So I took the number of Storm2k users for each year and normalized the results with linear scaling to get a fair comparison. So f.e. if in 2004 there would've been 1000 users and now there are 2000 then the number of posts is done times 2. These are the normalized results:

Top 20 busiest threads, number of posts (normalized), 2003 - 2021
01 - Ivan - 2004 - 23,692
02 - Ike - 2008 - 22,121
03 - Fay - 2008 - 21,971
04 - Dean - 2007 - 21,196
05 - Gustav - 2008 - 17,020
06 - Dolly - 2008 - 13,806
07 - Irma - 2017 - 13,553
08 - Irene - 2011 - 12,838
09 - Frances - 2004 - 12,599
10 - Matthew - 2016 - 12,524
11 - Wilma - 2005 - 12,310
12 - Emily - 2011 - 11,430
13 - Isaac - 2012 - 11,326
14 - Hermine - 2016 - 10,741
15 - Chris - 2006 - 10,441
16 - Dorian - 2019 - 9,529
17 - Harvey - 2017 - 8,535
18 - Charley - 2004 - 8,326
19 - Laura - 2020 - 7,917
20 - Bertha - 2008 - 7,257

One thing you notice now is a massive spike in popularity around 2008, since 4 of the top 10 busiest threads are from that year. Notable adbsentees from this normalized top 20 are Sandy (#36 - 5,090 posts normalized), Katrina (#38 - 4,830 posts normalized), Michael (#41 - 4,630 posts normalized) and Emily (#85 - 1,965 posts normalized). Not sure what interesting conclusions you can draw from this, but it was an intruiging investigation.

[LARanger]

I agree, that should totally be its own thread.

I'd propose that normalizing by registered users may not be the best move. I don't know if Storm2k bucks the overall trend, but, broadly speaking, it's my understanding that web forums generally are declining in the social media era. Many are more likely to join a Facebook group than a forum, for example, so one would have to normalize off of active users somehow.

That said, 2021-Ida makes clear that active storm days probably count, as well as category. That is, with 2017-Irma, we're talking over two weeks of a storm barreling in from the Atlantic that also made Category 5. Ida, of course, had a rather more tornadic lifespan.

Either way, awesome work.

[bjackrian]

I agree, really interesting work! I think LARanger is right about maybe not the best stat to normalize on because once you join, you are forever joined, so I assume that there are lots of folks who joined in the 2004 to 2010 range who no longer log in, making the number of users go up every year, but without necessarily increasing the number of active users.

Would be interesting to do the same analysis with active users (maybe number of users who logged in at least once that calendar year) if the admins have access to that kind of data and would share with you.

Either way, interesting to read and thanks for doing the work!

[TheDreamTraveler]

One thing you notice now is a massive spike in popularity around 2008, since 4 of the top 10 busiest threads are from that year. Notable adbsentees from this normalized top 20 are Sandy (#36 - 5,090 posts normalized), Katrina (#38 - 4,830 posts normalized), Michael (#41 - 4,630 posts normalized) and Emily (#85 - 1,965 posts normalized). Not sure what interesting conclusions you can draw from this, but it was an intruiging investigation.

Really cool statistics. I was actually looking at some old storm threads from 8 or 9 years ago and something that stuck out noticeable to me was how many more meteorologists were active on the board back then compared to now. It was actually really surprising. There's still a decent amount of activity here but actual mets giving out their thoughts seems to be a lot lower than before. Thankfully there's still a lot of very knowledgeable people here to help others out besides the few good mets that do post

[galaxy401]

Always like seeing which storm threads were the most active. A couple storms that one wouldn't expect are on there such as Emily 2011, Chris 2006, and Dolly 2008.

Chris and Emily were active because models had it being a Gulf coast threat (specifically a South Florida threat) but those storms ended up busting. 2008 really seems to be the year Storm2k was at its most active. 2013 sucked a lot of energy out of the forum until 2016.

Biggest snubs were Michael and Sandy. Michael is probably because the storm wasn't around for too long to generate a long discussion while Sandy hit the Northeast where not as many users were at. It also happened late in the season were many users were probably checking out at that point too.

[IcyTundra]

I'm surprised the thread for Rita wasn't very active. I guess since it wasn't very long lived there wasn't a lot of time for people to post but, there was a time where Rita was threatening the Houston/Galveston area while it was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico with a minimum central pressure of 895 MB.

[cycloneye]

I thought the Maria thread was going to get a lot more that what it got, 3058.

[HoustonFrog]

I'm surprised the thread for Rita wasn't very active. I guess since it wasn't very long lived there wasn't a lot of time for people to post but, there was a time where Rita was threatening the Houston/Galveston area while it was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico with a minimum central pressure of 895 MB.

Katrina, Rita and Harvey all stand out to me as being low given this scale of those storms.

[galaxy401]

I'm surprised the thread for Rita wasn't very active. I guess since it wasn't very long lived there wasn't a lot of time for people to post but, there was a time where Rita was threatening the Houston/Galveston area while it was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico with a minimum central pressure of 895 MB.

Katrina, Rita and Harvey all stand out to me as being low given this scale of those storms.

I theorize that Katrina and Rita were probably when Storm2k was still growing so there weren't as many users back then. Many probably joined after those storms.

Harvey did crack the top 20 so there was attention (a lot of those posts were after landfall too). I speculate it wasn't higher because it didn't threaten Florida.

[TheAustinMan]

Back at home I would've had a lot of spreadsheets where I saved this sort of data, but I was able to find some charts for Storm2k view counts in recent years that I put together before, which might help complement some of what we're seeing with which threads are the largest. Unfortunately the script I had stopped working earlier this year. There is additional data from 2020, but I'm currently located over a thousand miles away from the computer that has that data.











The only image I was able to find saved was made in the middle of 2020, before Laura. I think Laura had a pretty high user count, in addition to Delta and Zeta.

[LARanger]

{...} I was able to find some charts for Storm2k view counts in recent years that I put together {...}

I think this is one of those rare occasions where there's a post so awesome and epic that it shuts everyone else down by its very existence.

What's the software you used for those charts? They're gorgeous.

[Nuno]

Michael could never accumulate so many posts because it wasn't around very long.

Hmm, like ACE, this seems to be unfairly biased towards long-track storms

[mrbagyo]

What are the busiest threads outside of Atlantic basin?

[Hurricaneman]

What are the busiest threads outside of Atlantic basin?

The one for Haiyan I think could be wrong