During the hour or longer tornado live weather coverage, the weather man was getting a bit beyond annoying. The helper sitting at the news desk was glassy eyed and tried later to be creative like the main man, but the words never made it past his confusion. The weatherman kept using tornadic (tore-nad-ic) and tornadii (tor-nay-dee-eye). I guess when an s won’t do add an i for plural.They always have to repeat the difference between the two warning types the whole broadcast, because it’s not an intuative warning that can’t be confussed with the other.
I wish the government would change the tornado warning and watch to something obvious. I and many other Americans can’t remember which is which and be sure of it in an emergency. I think something like tornado spotted is what they should say. You get no confusion using it.
Are you telling us that warning sounds as benign as watch? It’s the difference between “Watch this!” and “WARNING, WILL ROBINSON! WARNING!”
Sorry, I’m not trying to make light of the danger you may be in.
When I lived in tornado alley, it seemed like no one really paid attention to the watch, but when it upgraded to a warning, all the neighbors had to go out into the street to see it.
Tornados, like earthquakes are exciting, before they happen and after they didn’t hurt you or anyone you know.
It’s pretty obvious to me what they mean. Do you have a suggestion for an “obvious” alternative to “tornado watch”?
And usually, if a tornado has been spotted, the weather reporter will tell us where.
On the other hand, I share your scorn for “tornadii,” or at least I would if I ever heard anyone trying to use the word. “Tornado” is a perfectly good English word, the kind that is made plural by adding “s” or “es” to the end.
My only potential objection to the “watch” usage is that I would begin to “watch” for a tornado after it had been spotted downwind of where I’m located. By then, of course, I would most likely be in the “warning” zone. Said another way, the only thing I would be “watching” during the times of the notice would be the TV coverage of the weather. But if I hadn’t been watching the TV I wouldn’t have known about the “watch” to begin with – unless I heard about it on the radio.
Maybe “alert” might be an alternate word, but it connotes more serious attention than “watch” to me and is almost a “warning” itself.
Unfortunately I don’t think as well as I used to and I know many of the older adults must have the same problem. As I said originaly. (Tornado Spotted) is obvious and not confusing.
I had those wall cloulds pass about twenty feet over me about ten years ago. They are what tornados drop down from. The whole state was besieged that day and the sherrifs never came out to our neighborheood which had severe damage of some residenses. I laid in a patch of nettle on a 10 foot drop from yard to marsh.
There is nothing wrong with the word tornadic. It’s an adjective used in describing things related to tornadoes (“tornadic winds,” “tornadic circulation,” “tornadic supercell” and such). Do you mean that the weatherman was using tornadic as a noun?
I was trying to speed type to beat the edit timer.
I was only wearing shorts at the time. My whole body was full of nettle blisters. I had been watching television, and sun was shining in. I went outside because of a comercial break, and in the other direction almost over the house were all the black low clouds. By the time I was half way to the hill side drop to marsh level large debris was flying straight across the yards at high speed. I was praying that nothing cliped me, and I was trying to run, but it wasn’t really a run. A dulluge started a few minutes after I hit the safty point, so I drowned for about 10 minutes in the nettle and the rain felt like bb’s hitting me. My couple hundred pounds of wooden stairs ended up partialy on my car. I had to repair siding, outdoor lighting fixtures and the broken stairs. The distruction went between me and a neighbors house, and hit the neibor across the road. They happened to be directly in the high wind path, and got it good, but they weren’t home. The news stations put up the warnings almost 30 minutes later. I took me about 4 years before a thunder storm didn’t wake me instantly, and have my heart racing the entire storm. The same for extremely windy weather.
A coworker that lived about 50 miles away, had just shut the garge door where a summer party was going on and a big sign from accross the road slamed into the door. It would have killed anybody in the garage. A few years later they bought a new house, and a tornado that didn’t touch ground, shattered every window in the new house and sent small glass shards all over everything they owned, that was in the house.
I meant that he used it continously for over one hour. I know it’s a real word, it was it’s constant use that was annoying, with the use of tornadii thrown in. I was waiting for their use with another over used word. Weatherman “The tornadic showers have produced a number of tornadii.”