Misinformed news articles on cloud formations

[Jason Harris]

Wonder how much checking is usually done for news articles like the following where shelf cloud is claimed

Clouds form a vast ring of Gyoer, 70 miles west of Budapest, Hungary, following a torrential shower and hail storm. The formation is a shelf cloud - a low, horizontal wedge-shaped arcus cloud, associated with a thunderstorm gust front (or occasionally with a cold front, even in the absence of thunderstorms)

when in fact as one of the comments indicates in the "talkback" it's an anvil from a thunderstorm. If there were a shelf cloud it's not visible from this distance of the photo. Any Hungarian chasers who were on that storm or can confirm whether it were actually a supercell?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1281516/Ring-sky-Storm-clouds-form-dramatic-circle-sunset-Hungary.html

 

[Rejean Boudreau]

Hello Jason, the article is clearly talking about the sight of the anvil as you said, but that ''goofi'' journalist picked up the shelf cloud to suit what he wanted to say - it does not even fit the ''low, horizontal wedge-shaped arcus cloud" definition, but who cares, the guy looks smart by pushing that line for those who don't know.

The real question should be ''Was he misinformed, or, does he/she misinforms the viewers''

We should send him a photo of a real shelf cloud/arcus cloud and ask him if he can tell the difference.

It seems there's less and less care in journalism - general news. Last year a large tornado hitted France, and the next day it was a ''mini'' tornado in the newspaper.

Here in Quebec, we have the exact same discussion this week on our french forum about an event from last week. It was either a tornado (f0 maybe f1) or strong straight winds. But the next day in the local TV news, one talked about a "hurricane" ( can you believe it) and it was a ''mini'' tornado in the newspaper. Reports from local chasers are talking about a wall cloud approaching the town, but damages seems to be from straight winds (most are pointing in a single direction at each damaged sites). No tornado was seen on that event.


Hey Journalists.. can you tell us at what stage a mini tornado becomes a ''real'' tornado ?

If she/he does'nt know, then why not ask to someone who knows better, be it the weather man, the weather bureau, or even any chaser. By using the wrong name, it can only add to the confusion and poor popular education from the medias.

 

[Mike Deep]

dailymail.co.uk

Here's your problem.
Daily Mail can't be bothered to fact-check anything, at all, ever.

 

[Rejean Boudreau]

Someone sent me a message in private, but by the time i tried to answer the server might have got a problem and i cannot send the answer (message is not there anymore to reply). So here's the information you asked for :

The forum and website are meteoalerte.com & meteocentre.com managed by the UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal). While meteocentre.com is more of a ressources website with links to specific informations about the weather, meteoalerte.com is the french discussion forum about the local weather. It is also affiliated (dubbed) to Meteoalerte Toulouse (in France).

The forum is quite similar to Stormtrack, but with less aspect on tornado/hurricane as we have not much event of that type in the north east, but the forum comes alive with large thunderstorms in the summer, or large snow storms in the winter (and it becomes really nuts when we got a tornado event ) .

Have a nice day, and it was a pleasure to inform you about it.