Why talking about “mini-tornadoes” for bad weather means nothing

• On Sunday, in the Somme and Pas-de-Calais, tornadoes hit several municipalities and were described by several media as "mini-tornadoes".

• But according to several specialists at Météo-France, the term would be used wrongly and would tend to minimize a phenomenon with serious consequences.

• What is a tornado really?

  20 Minutes

  interviewed several specialists.

Sunday evening, many municipalities in the departments of Pas-de-Calais and the Somme experienced violent tornadoes.

In the early evening, several houses were torn from their roofs and most residents had to leave their homes.

The two departments were placed on yellow vigilance for thunderstorms by Météo-France.

This Monday morning, in the dispatch sent by Agence France-Presse (AFP), one could read: “Sunday evening, a “mini-tornado” […] fell on Conty, near Amiens in the Somme .

A similar "violent phenomenon" hit dozens of houses and tore roofs off in Bihucourt, Pas-de-Calais.

The information is then taken up by many media - including

- using the words used by the press agency, in particular that of “mini-tornado”.

A term that has made more than one scientist wince on social networks: this term would have no scientific value and would be used wrongly.

😡 This Tweet is aimed at French media and journalists: STOP!

It is unbearable to read, each time a tornado phenomenon affects the country, articles using the term "mini-#tornado".

This term does not correspond to any pheno.

weather report.

Absolutely ban!

pic.twitter.com/bHH8MmOmtu

— Nahel Belgherze (@WxNB_) October 24, 2022

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Sunday evening, to describe the bad weather in the two departments of Hauts-de-France, AFP used the term "mini-tornadoes".

Its use is then attributed to the Prefecture of the Somme, which refutes its use.

“We don't use it in our press release.

The only term used is a "strong stormy activity"", we report to 20 Minutes .

But too late, the term is already reused by all the media.

"Mini-tornadoes hit the Somme, "violent phenomenon" in the Pas-de-Calais", headlined Ouest-France.

Le Figaro, CNews, HuffPost, La Provence or even BFMTV as well.

has not escaped this either.

But meteorological experts can be reassured: the term has since been banished from our vocabulary.

For good reason, the term "mini-tornado" has no scientific definition.

However, its use is systematic, regrets the engineer at Météo-France and tornado hunter Tony Le Bastard, with

.

"We are fighting for this term to be banned, because often under this word 'mini-tornado', too many things are mixed up".

Same observation on the side of Samuel Morin, researcher at Météo-France.

“This term does not correspond to the description of a physical phenomenon used in meteorology”.

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In addition to the risk of being confused with another phenomenon, the two specialists point the finger at the minimization of the problem.

“It gives us the impression that it is a small phenomenon, that it is nice, when it is not necessarily so”.

According to Tony Le Bastard, the term "mini-tornado" could come from the comparison with the tornadoes that have occurred with the United States, where the intensities are often stronger.

“Except that it remains the same phenomenon”, exults the specialist.

For Samuel Morin, the term used by the media could come from a certain confusion between tornadoes and gusts of wind.

What is a tornado?

In general, tornadoes form on a small scale and for a very short lifespan.

Most of the time, they are difficult to predict because they are extremely localized.

But where do they come from?

Tornadoes come from thunderstorms, called “supercells”.

Simply, the thunderstorm forms when the warm air below meets the cold air above and in the face of this imbalance, a movement is created to carry the hot air from below to above.

"This is called instability", explains Tony Le Bastard, to which he adds several other elements: humidity, but also other external factors that can trigger a storm, such as the presence of a mountain example.

But beware, not all thunderstorms become tornadoes.

The engineer continues his explanation: “To create a tornado, you need an additional element to become supercell.

It takes winds that vary with altitude that will cause a rotation of the ascending column of the storm, called the mesocyclone.

With the acceleration of the rotation near the ground, the tornado will form”.

Even more simply, they can be described as Samuel Morin does as “a whirlwind phenomenon linked to a storm”.

In addition, the consequences of tornadoes can be very serious, alert the two specialists.

To know their seriousness, the scale of Fujita makes it possible to classify them according to the damage caused, through six categories (from 0 to 5).

During the tornadoes that occurred in the North, this Sunday, the degree would be between 2 and 3. A scale much higher than the average in France, often located in 0 and 1, explains engineer Tony Le Bastard.

And Samuel Morin concludes: “There is already a whole gradation, a scale that characterizes the severity of a tornado.

There is no need to invent an additional word to describe the phenomenon”.

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