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Sam Jowett

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Posts posted by Sam Jowett

    Are the Media Correct to use the term Mini Tornado?

    in Hurricanes, Cyclones and Extreme weather worldwide

    Posted

    Sam, I am not a journo,honestly :lol:

    So we can call it a minor one, a weak one etc but not a mini one.?.

    That seems bizarre to me, but we can call a small car a mini or a small heatwave a mini etc.

    At the end of the day surely what's important is that the paper gives the right impression to the public.

    I've argued this many times, more people probably die drowning in a Bath than through a Tornado in the UK.

    You can't acurately forecast Tornado's in the UK and certainly not there intensity.

    So why bother IMO.

    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".

    As I say why should a Tornado be any different.?

    Matt Swift

    LOL, it's you Matt! :whistling:

    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! :p

    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.

    Are the Media Correct to use the term Mini Tornado?

    in Hurricanes, Cyclones and Extreme weather worldwide

    Posted

    To add to my previous post.

    1. Most people don't undertand the wind scale, and wouldn't know what a Force 5 wind was. Why on earth do we think they will understand the F scale.

    2. Most people will never see a Tornado in there life, nor will it ever effect them, some people can't een be bothered to learn what an APR is. Do we really expect a newpaper to give a 2 or 3 paragraph explaining about tornado's every time they mention them.

    3. We use words such as mini all the time in weather, i.e "mini heatwave", exactly the same arguments could be used, it's either a heatwave or it's not.

    Or how about when we said it's a bit windy outside. etc etc

    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:

    Are the Media Correct to use the term Mini Tornado?

    in Hurricanes, Cyclones and Extreme weather worldwide

    Posted

    I think the reason people in this country call them Mini Tornadoes is that most people are only familiar with the devastating American tornadoes, and the belief that England doesn't get Tornadoes.

    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:

    Cambridgeshire Tornado (30 May)

    in Storms & Severe Weather

    Posted

    Great footage Matty... I take it you don't have a car, I'd have been on the tail of that one if I could! Thanks for filling the report to the TORRO DB... this ensures we keep a proper log of the events and will no doubt keep your part of the world as the tornado alley of the UK!

    A shame you're having trouble uploading your video L.O. Perhaps you could email it to me at sam.jowett@torro.org.uk and I'll upload it then link across to it here? A report of what you saw would be great too. If you're having trouble loading it to the TORRO DB I can do that for you. :p

    Small Twister In Caithness

    in Storms & Severe Weather

    Posted

    Well they certainlt don't have to go in straigt lines, no :) , but their average route is usually pretty straight because they're following the parent cloud.

    If you don't mind taking a closer look, that would be great. You should be able to tell on closer inspection whether or not the damage is fresh. Do you know the rough direction the tornado was travelling in as that ought to tell us whether or not it was likely to be able to align the trees into a southerly alignment. A photo looking straight up the damage path might be useful too as it will show how the trees are aligned to the assumed path. It should be clear if it's tornadic damage simply because straight line winds don't leave a straight path...

    Could be worth printing out a map of the location from http://www.multimap.com/ too so that you can plot where it looks like the damage started and ended if it's accessable.

    Thanks for all your help with this Paula... you're doing a great job! <_<

    Small Twister In Caithness

    in Storms & Severe Weather

    Posted

    ok just received the piccies i was on about.... if i do this right and you can see the pic... does this look like tornado damage?

    <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

    Thanks for the pm Paula, I missed the images first time round! :)

    That looks like pretty impressive damage! I assume the tornado moved from left to right through this location? If so, it looks like the left hand side of the tornado did very little damage with almost all the tree felling being similar to the direction of the motion of the tornado. If you think how the winds rotate within a tornado, in an anticlockwise direction (99% of the time anyway!), the forward speed can be added to the rotational speed on the right of the motion and subtracted on the left... hence all the felling occurred on the right of the vortex.

    Those trees would act like sails with being so dense, but even so we must be looking at something like a T2/T3 with winds of around 90mph I would think. Would those trees have been exposed to the storm force winds you get there every winter?

    The T-Scale can be found at http://www.torro.org.uk/TORRO/severeweather/tscale.php

    Small Twister In Caithness

    in Storms & Severe Weather

    Posted

    hi sam,

    no there where no buildings.... or non that you could tell any difference of :lol:

    still waiting for the pic of those damaged and downed trees to come through to me though, they have been felled in different directions, not all the sae like normal storm damage up here. will go try that link again then.

    It sounds like we've got it covered int his thread actually Paula... I'll pass the details you've given on. What would be handy is if we could get permission from the owners of the various photos to add them to the TORRO gallery, only for research/display purposes. Fully credited of course and the owner retains the copywrite. Any chance you could send the addresses of the folks you got photos from and pass them on to me at sam@jowett.torro.org.uk please? :)

    Small Twister In Caithness

    in Storms & Severe Weather

    Posted

    That's odd, sounds like it's not seperating the punctuation out as text properly or something. Would you mind giving it another go without the () and / please Paula. If that doesn't work I'll get on to Stu when he gets back from the US and just post the things you've discovered manually to the TORRO forum.

    Thanks for taking a drive out to find out more. :lol: I take it there were no buildings in the way of the tornado?

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