Someone needs to give CNN staff writers a meteorology lesson...

Mark Farnik

Mark Farnik

EF5
Joined
Mar 19, 2005
Messages
558
Location
Independence, MO
I just thought y'all might want to see this. This is quite hilarious, yet very sad at the same time.
From a CNN article on President Bush's visit to Greensburg, KS today:
Friday's monster tornado ripped a 22-mile (35-kilometer) path through rural south Kansas, leaving an annihilated Greensburg in its wake, the National Weather Service said. The weather service classified the twister as an EF-5, a designation reserved for the strongest funnel clouds.
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:rolleyes: :D
Just goes to show how utterly incompetent the news media is when it comes to using meteorological terms properly in articles... particularly in regards to tornadoes. Can they not distinguish the fact that a funnel cloud and a tornado are NOTone and the same?!? Geeze Louise. As Napolean Dynamite would say: "Gawsh! Idiots!":cool:
 
Could be a case of rectangles versus squares. A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square. A tornado essentially is a funnel cloud but a funnel cloud is not necessarily a tornado.
 
Justin Turcotte said:
A tornado essentially is a funnel cloud but a funnel cloud is not necessarily a tornado.
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No, a tornado is wind -- not the cloud.

And they don't rank damage caused by funnel clouds, the EF scale is for tornadoes only.

Unfortunately every scientific field can offer up boatloads of examples of simple mistakes. We still hear of Challenger & Columbia "exploding" when they simply broke up.
 
Mark Farnik said:
I just thought y'all might want to see this. This is quite hilarious, yet very sad at the same time.
From a CNN article on President Bush's visit to Greensburg, KS today:
:rolleyes: :D
Just goes to show how utterly incompetent the news media is when it comes to using meteorological terms properly in articles... particularly in regards to tornadoes. Can they not distinguish the fact that a funnel cloud and a tornado are NOTone and the same?!? Geeze Louise. As Napolean Dynamite would say: "Gawsh! Idiots!":cool:
Click to expand...

I've seen this sort of thing before from the media as they are usually trying to write flowery or intriguing articles. In this case, writing it the way they did simply sounds more interesting to common folk than using the word "tornado" three times within the span of two sentences (redundancy). Doesn't mean it is scientifically correct, of course, as you point out.
 
On a similar note while in Kansas Saturday evening, we had a local radio station that was going wall to wall with reports. The announcer stated that his daughter was out spotting and "was a 6 year veteran of spotting and new everything." She commented to him that a local town was hit by 80 mph RFD winds. When the announcer conveyed this message it was the town was hit by a 80 mph "rear flank draft down." We had a good laugh over the report.
 
Good grief, I guess that's what happens, when you get the media covering anything, 9 out of 10 times, they're too darn lazy to bother getting all the correct info, and this is yet another example of the problems that chasers and meterologists face, when trying to help educate the public correctly on severe weather.

Willie
 
Darin Kaiser said:
On a similar note while in Kansas Saturday evening, we had a local radio station that was going wall to wall with reports. The announcer stated that his daughter was out spotting and "was a 6 year veteran of spotting and new everything." She commented to him that a local town was hit by 80 mph RFD winds. When the announcer conveyed this message it was the town was hit by a 80 mph "rear flank draft down." We had a good laugh over the report.
Click to expand...

I heard the same exact thing on that radio station while chasing! and LOL'd.
 
I've heard some major gaffs like a rain-free core...book echo....and many more from radio, tv, and journalists. If they could get their facts straight before the talking heads start slinging the jargon, maybe ...just maybe... they could sound somewhat reasonable. I also caught the Associated Press butchering the town name of Macksville KS in their article about the unfortunate tornado fatality of the local firefighter/LE officer. The had the town name down as Maxville. For a major news source this is pretty sad. I can just imagine all the goofy reporting going on in Greensburg. :cool:
 
It's a smackdown by the rear flank draft down...yeah I heard that one too. Those great words had our car chuckling to no end. The jokes flew after that....with mentions of course of Allsups and beefing.
 
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