I can somewhat understand the push for wokism and the use of scientific terms, like replacing 'Pineapple Express' with 'Atmospheric River.' However, tv weather meteorologists and MSM seem to be keeping the old terminology while also creating new ones, like 'Power Cyclone which, according to a quick online search isn't even an official meteorological term.
It feels as though clickbait sensationalism, fueled by social media and the desire for clickbait, is now creeping into weather forecasts.
It's not that the thing itself is nothing or not real, but they do love to hype shit like nobody will pay attention if they don't.
I guess the media thinks it gets more attention from a public that's ignorant of how weather and climate work. (I do not think it helps, and the scientists dislike it.)
"Pineapple express" = the term for a low trough that funnels large amounts of warm moist air from roughly Hawaii to the cold coastline of BC & the US northwest, which then dumps major amounts of rain once the atmosphere gets too cold to hold the moisture in suspension (well, obviously).
Now they like to call that an "atmospheric river", to emphasize just how much moisture it will transport from the tropics to right on top of us. But basically, it is the same thing.
"Bomb cyclone" is the term being used for this huge fall storm we're having with a deep low pressure center, so a sharply cyclonic shape, and therefore winds up to around 170 km/h. Is it a major storm with the potential for serious damage and loss of lives? Yes.
Anyone from Atlantic Canada will already know about nasty cold weather storm fronts like "Nor'Easters" and so on; I guess they wanted some north pacific equivalent of that colloquial language.
But the words "bomb cyclone" are just ... silly and clunky and not bomb-like at all. It is a serious storm, but with an un-serious name.
Anyways, lots of damage - someone in Washington died, and now some kayaker is MIA in West Van, probably drowned. (Who goes out on the water in this shit? Even BC Ferries is staying in port, because docking would be impossible. What chance does a canoe have?)
The whole "perfect storm" phrease, if you ever heard the original story, was when a Nor'Easter merged with a hurricane remnant and some other weird from to create a huge motherfucker of a winter storm.
Now every media outlet uses the description "perfect storm of _____ " not just for such weather, but as a term for any time two or more things merge to become more something something blah blah. Could be a "perfect storm" of dipping sauce or used low car prices.
Do not even get me started on when the use "Snowmageddon". Every year, snow comes, the roads get blocked by clowns, plows and de-icing get overwhelmed, and airline service goes to shit. So where is the "-mageddon" after a week passes by? Gone.
Brutal destructive winter is things like the ice storm in Quebec in the 1990s. Nothing as bad as freezing rain; it just fucks up nearly everything at the same time.
By the way, it's not weather but "Asian giant hornet" = "murder hornet". You can thank social media for that name. At least it wasn't "Stingy McStingface".
