Climatic hysteria may contribute to panic

‘‘So far, hell has been 30 minutes of light drizzle.’’

That slightly cynical assessment, emanating from Central Otago and delivered early yesterday afternoon, was a comment on some of the apparently hysterical advance reporting of the mid-winter cold snap that started unfolding in the deep south of the country early on Tuesday, and one headline in particular.

‘‘Clickbait,’’ was the assessment from weather expert Philip Duncan, who runs Weatherwatchnz, selfdescribed as ‘‘New Zealand’s Weather News Authority’’, when that headline, starting with the overly dramatic ‘‘Four days of hell’’, appeared online on Monday.

‘‘It’s the coldest event of a year and, on its own, not even a storm. Severe weather highly likely, but the over the top language they use is a joke,’’ Duncan said when asked to characterise the event himself.

‘‘Ridiculous. Hell is hot too,’’ was one Twitter user’s response. But in reality, it was only the latest incarnation of the ‘‘weather as an event’’ phenomenon that seems to have infected our understanding of the workings of our planet’s climate in recent years. If you have any doubt about whether or not climate change is real, just look at how the way we describe it has been ramped up.

When was the first time you heard of a ‘‘weather bomb’’, for example? If memory serves, the first climatic cocktail to earn that explosive description was a period of heavy rain and flooding that hit the Coromandel a couple of years into this millennium. Before then, flooding and heavy rain, with a ‘‘torrential’’ here and a ‘‘galeforce’’ there, sufficed.

Perhaps, then, this is weather for the digital age. When so many media organisations are competing for the ‘‘traffic’’, or ‘‘clicks’’, of those looking for updates on our atmospheric conditions, maybe the phrase ‘‘severe weather’’ simply doesn’t represent slick enough packaging.

Snowstorm? Too vanilla. What about ‘‘snowmageddon’’? Certainly sounds more serious. But everyone who’s been through a major snowstorm has their own frame of reference. Those on the receiving end of the ‘‘perfect storm’’ that hit Canterbury and Otago in June 2006, for example, especially those who spent up to three weeks without power, might be tempted to imagine something even worse.

Surely the aim is for people to be adequately prepared to react to severe weather events without being panicked by nightmare scenarios? As a Federated Farmers spokesman encouraged members: ‘‘Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst’’.

Sober and sensible may be a little boring, but it’s surely the better way to go. After all, in the age of climate change, the weather is serious business and not to be taken lightly.