Weather terms always changing

[The PIT]

Last year I heard the for the first time heavy fog. How can foggy be heavy god knows. I've never been crushed by it but I've had trouble seeing through it. Dense fog yes Heavy fog no.

Another one. grass frost. Eh???????? Don't you mean ground frost??? Next we have concrete frost.

Any more silly terms

Grass dew????

Windscreen frost?????

[davehsug]

Last year I heard the for the first time heavy fog. How can foggy be heavy god knows. I've never been crushed by it but I've had trouble seeing through it. Dense fog yes Heavy fog no.

Another one. grass frost. Eh???????? Don't you mean ground frost??? Next we have concrete frost.

Any more silly terms

Grass dew????

Windscreen frost?????

a few more Pit. heavy winds? light rain described as drizzle? (incidentally what happened to drizzle? we never have peoper drizzle these days). Black ice? ( a totally different phenomenon & quite rare in this country).

Dave

[J07]

Well -RA and DZ are still reported differently on metars! So maybe it's just the media dumbing down!

[Turnedoutniceagain]

Last year I heard the for the first time heavy fog. How can foggy be heavy god knows. I've never been crushed by it but I've had trouble seeing through it. Dense fog yes Heavy fog no.

Another one. grass frost. Eh???????? Don't you mean ground frost??? Next we have concrete frost.

Any more silly terms

Grass dew????

Windscreen frost?????

That Carol woman on the Beeb is always going about "There's plenty of weather about today" . Errr......well obviously

[osmposm]

Last year I heard the for the first time heavy fog. How can foggy be heavy god knows. I've never been crushed by it but I've had trouble seeing through it. Dense fog yes Heavy fog no.

Another one. grass frost. Eh???????? Don't you mean ground frost???.....

I don't have problems with either of those, Pit. The second definition of 'Heavy' in the OED is "of great density", and another one is given as "severe, intense, extensive" - not to mention "oppressive". What about 'heavy fighting', 'heavy losses', 'heavy traffic'? It's a word that has long been used in a slightly metaphorical way.

'Grass frost' is perhaps even more excuseable, since the official term for its measurement is 'grass minimum', and it is defined as "the temperature recorded in open air ground on short turf with the bulb of the thermometer just in contact with the tips of the blades of grass". You will often have a frost over grass when you do not have one over concrete. The term's use instead of 'ground frost' has the particular advantage - and this is probably why it's sometimes used - that it avoids confusion amongst the general public who often think that 'ground frost' means a particularly intense and ground-penetrating frost: I have even heard a TV weather girl (clearly not a met professional) use the phrase "a penetrating ground frost" when describing a "bitterly cold night with temperatures down to 2^oC"!!

The word that drives me nuts in forecasts is the extraneous "period" - as in "cloud will thicken during the overnight period"....instead of simply saying "cloud will thicken overnight".