Last week’s blizzard, the worst in years from the Mid-Atlantic beaches to eastern New England, brought the word “bombogenesis” squarely back onto the highway of headlines. Scientists whose job it is to delve into the workings of such meteorological mayhem cleared the on-ramp for this term.
Yesterday’s nor’easter has become today’s “bomb cyclone.” Actually, the latter term has been around for decades, but it just hasn’t been used much outside science circles until recent years. A bomb cyclone, for those unfamiliar, is a storm that intensifies with unusual haste. Such a storm will necessarily undergo “bombogenesis” as it morphs from a pedestrian storm into such a meteorological powerhouse.
The increasing infusion of scientific vernacular in media storm coverage is certainly laudable, bringing ever-growing public awareness and appreciation for the nuances of our science. But do we risk losing people’s attention by, ironically, focusing too much of their attention on the discipline’s jargon?
We cannot afford to have the most basic and vital part of our messaging – what will the weather be and how should I respond to stay safe? – get lost in the communication.
An opinion piece written by Vinay Menon for the Toronto Star, “Stop with the ‘bomb cyclones’ and the ‘thundersnow’ – the world is scary enough without alarmist weather words,” strikes a chord for many. Menon makes some thought-provoking points about our use of explosive-sounding weather terminology and argues that it essentially offers “no actionable insights” to people. There’s surely some truth to that and something meteorologists need to consider. To be fair, those actionable insights are almost always included in the forecast, but perhaps they too often get lost in the cloud of so much information.
Indeed, over the past few years, we have seen an onslaught of frightening-sounding weather words and phrases accompany nearly every major weather happening. Polar vortex, one of the first widely wielded, is also the most familiar and often referenced during the winter. Importantly, most of these terms have deep roots in science and have been popularized in the media in recent years. The Capital Weather Gang piece, “Bombogenesis, thundersnow and the polar vortex: Explaining what your favorite winter weather terms mean,” nicely defines a few of those most frequently seen.
Beyond the science-based nomenclature, nicknaming storms is also used to describe big weather events. Snowmageddon from 2010 remains one of the most memorable, coined for a mammoth storm that hit Washington, D.C., that winter. Superstorm Sandy, the devastating late-season hurricane of 2012, had its official tropical name “Sandy” prefixed with the “superstorm” superlative before hitting New York, and it is aptly etched with that title in weather history.
Tracing back decades before that, we had the Superstorm of 1993, also called the Storm of the Century, an immense March cyclone with unforgettable impacts from the Deep South to New England. That storm, among many others, has also been forever recorded with its explanatory epithet in the archives.
Memorializing truly major storms with a label of some sort does have meaningful purpose, providing clarity and a point of reference for the historical record, even though the name may have come across as hyperbole at the time to people during the buildup to the storm.
Looking at something as basic as adjectives and modifiers, we can find times when the more extreme of these can be perceived as being overplayed, even though many are fittingly applied. Think of these few as examples: Historic. Once-in-a-century. Epic. For-the-ages. It can be argued that overuse has blunted the power of those words and expressions.
As a meteorologist who has spent a career in broadcasting, I can’t deny that we love to label things to hold attention and enhance recall. In communications, branding is integral to our business. Just watch any of your favorite news stations or check in on your go-to weather app, and you’ll probably be able to identify the source simply by a slogan.
Framed and repeated phrases are similarly used in many forecasts, and while that is important in our era of explosive content delivery, how we present must also always be viewed through the lens of how others perceive.
Descriptive phrases and scientific terminology are as intrinsic to weather communication as the simple conveyance of daily highs and lows. But the line between abundance of information and scarcity of detail will never be perfectly drawn. It’s something to keep in mind, by those of us in the professional weather community, as well as those in the public who rely on our forecasts.
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