Unless you have been hiding under a rock today, you probably are aware that a huge winter storm is about to unleash a full scale apocalypse on the Northeastern U.S. I am sure that you have been seeing TV weathermen (sorry I mean ‘weatherpeople’ or is it ‘weatherpersons?’) and news anchors using some of their all time fave buzzwords. And since I have taken one whole weather class while I was in college I thought I would help decode some of the mystery behind these words (for those of you who are reading things on the internet, but are too lazy to Google the meaning of these words yourself).
First off, we now name winter storms. I am not sure when this started, but I would imagine it started sometime around the advent of the 24-hour news network. I mean they HAVE to talk about something. Naming a storm allows them to spend a sold hour of BSing about “now it has become the first named winter storm of the season” and then compare it to other named winter storms of the past. This one promises to be especially heinous, generally the more basic white girl the name, the more dangerous the storm is.”Stella” promises to be the most basic storm in years.
The second, and probably my most hated word, Nor’easter. You can read the definition here, or just take my word for it, that it is a bullshit word for a storm, but people like saying it because it sounds cool and makes them appear to know what they are talking about. Generally any large storm hitting the Northeast is going to be referred to this way, and anyone saying it should probably get hit in the face.
The third buzzword was actually new to me. Bombogenesis. Sound it out slowly with me, bomb-bo-gen-e-sis. I like it, for now, the reason you don’t hear this one constantly is because it doesn’t happen that often. The definition of the word is actually really simple. The barometric pressure drops 24 millibars in 24 hours. The highest and lowest barometric pressures ever recorded are only about 200 millibars apart (around 1080 and 870) so you can see how a 24 millibar drop in one day would signify a pretty significant storm.
Joe Gribble is the SoBros Network’s resident East Tennessean and expert on the Vols and unpopular opinions. You can disagree with him, but just know – he really doesn’t give a flying fuck. Follow on Twitter: @BrosephGribble
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