Sam Jowett

Snow turning sleety down here in Coalville now and wet bulb has started to pick up again. Suspect that's it for me... wait to see how long the snowmen take to melt in the rain now!

Around 8cm of level snow here now...

Heavy snow here now... just driven back from Nottinghamshire and the roads are struggling... even settling on the M1! Will take a measurement shortly... See http://www.photoweather.com/aws/cam

Sleet just turning to snow here in Coalville now. Hopefully it will get heavier and turn the thaw around. Still 5 cm lying on untreated surfaces though. http://www.photoweather.com/aws/cam/

Only light snow now, but it has been falling almost constantly for 12 hours now! Has topped us up to 7cm now... another 6 hours and I might actually get up to the 10cm I was hoping for! Still slightly above freezing though and rather slushy near the buildings and on tarmac...

Still moderate snow here... check out the cam, the road's white again! http://www.photoweather.com/aws/cam/

Light to moderate snow again here in Coalville. After a slight thaw the temeprature is falling back towards freezing (max'd at +0.7ºC, now +0.2ºC). Looking quite tasty to the SW of here atm...

Moderate snow again here in Coalville after it eased off for a while. Hopefully get a couple more cm before it clears/dies out. Temperature slightly above freezing now, so a slight thaw occurring in prone spots... http://www.photoweather.com/aws

5cm of snow here in Coalville now... still dry and blowing snow, though the temperature is approaching freezing now. http://www.photoweather.com/aws

About 3cm here in Coalville... nice powder though, falling light to moderate and another 10 hours to come! Watch it pile up on my cams and animations: http://www.photoweather.com/aws/cam/

LOL, it's you Matt! I'm not a fan of mini, small, or weak to be honest... that's not the impression you'll get if one whacks you around the side of the head! You said yourself though, "what's more important is that the paper gives the right impression to the public", which I completely agree with. I think use of mini gives the wrong impression. Consider the Bow Street tornado on Tuesday... a large proportion of the media called it mini, yet no-one actually saw it. As it happens, it was quite strong too, particularly for a UK tornado, so use of mini was wholly misleading and inappropriate. Also, you say "Mini means small, compared to what most of the public thinks a tornado looks like, most of the Tornado's in the country are "mini".". Of course the public thinks a tornado looks like the major ones in the US, that's all the media this side of the pond are going to report on, but as mentioned above, 85% of US tornadoes are comparable to our own. It's less misleading to be vague about the size/strength of the tornado, because 1. the media probably don't know anyway, and 2. the public will regard a tornado as a threat if they actually see one.

1. There's no need to explain the scale, simply calling it a "tornado" should get the message across. It's important the public don't think that a weak tornado can't still be very damaging... it's probably the most extreme weather they could experience. 2. Agreed, most won't ever see a tornado, but if they do and it's coming towards them, expectation of something dangerous could save their life... apathy by use of the term mini could get them killed! Who said anything about 2 or 3 paragraphs? If education is important to the paper then they can do that. Alternatively they could just report accurately. Daft really, recent tornado reports in the papers were massively sensationalised, yet there was this contradiction in terms by using the term mini! The media could definitely improve by reporting accurately... 3. Other usage of diminutive terms is less inappropriate because it doesn't create apathy for momentary decision which could save their life. Also, people are far more familiar with the other conditions you've mentioned. Do I detect you're a journalist of some kind? :lol:

You've highlighted the problem perfectly here. The media have used mini that often and peddled stories that give you the impression that all US tornadoes are devastating. 85% of US tornadoes have a similar strength to the ones in the UK, yet they don't see the need to call the weaker ones mini. By using mini they've lead you to believe it's a suitable badge for those in the UK, when its not. If you get caught in a T0/F0 tornado it will likely be the windiest thing you have every experienced and threaten your life. The media calling them mini-tornadoes waters that threat down and will create apathy amongst the general public. It may not be the job of papers to educate people, but people use the papers to educate themselves, so the papers should take that responsibility seriously. By creating a misconception that UK tornadoes are no threat to your safety, they are endangering the lives of anyone that has listened to them and is faced with a tornado! To answer the earlier comments btw, the T (for tornado, not TORRO) scale measures tornadoes by an estimate of their wind speed rather than the damage/cost they produce as the Fujita scale does. In practice events for both scales are assessed by the damage anyway, but the T scale will allow for measuring wind speeds using dopplar or other methods too. The T scale has the potential to be better than the F scale imo, but they may as well be identical as it stands. Guess which I voted for! :blink:

Take a look at SW Texas. Classic supercell with hook echo, TVS and up to 4" hail according to radar over the last half hour or so!

Getting lighter here in Whitwick now and thawing faster than it's settling thanks to surface temperatures of 2ºC, despite air temperature being around -1ºC. That's March for you I suppose!