“I hate to call it a worst case scenario,” wrote the internet meteorologist, “but this is a worst case scenario.

The week just gone was a hot mess of weather forecasting. A category 5 farce when a Tasman Low deepened off the NSW coast and the media couldn’t contain themselves.

When low pressure systems deepen rapidly they undergo what’s called ‘cyclogenesis’ which is a mix of two Greek words - ‘kyklo’ for circle and ‘genesis’ for creation.

Cyclones also undergo cyclogenesis, yet the low that formed off the NSW coast this week was not a cyclone as we know it.

However, that didn’t stop journalists running with the term. No surprise as it’s loaded with the kind of feelings media people secretly enjoy: drama, anguish, danger.

Worse was when they learned the ‘cyclone’ had deepened fast enough to ‘bomb’.

Let’s pause for a moment. Media people weren’t fabricating here, a low can deepen so quickly it crosses a threshold where weather people say they ‘bomb’. It’s a faintly ridiculous term, created in the land of battleground states and supermarkets, but it’s become accepted in the world of weather.

So that’s why, in the eastern states at least, ‘bomb cyclone’ ran in so many headlines, plus other terms such as ‘bombogenesis’, which conjured both a Biblical sense of awe and of great destruction.

No wonder it got air-time.

Once it found its way to social media, where admins aren’t restricted by things like regulations or press standards, the bomb cyclone went viral - first explosive, then destructive, and now it was infectious too.

Facebook forecasters filled the Attention Economy with anxiety-inducing content. ‘The biggest’, ‘the strongest’, ‘the scariest’.

Somewhere in the maelstrom a lone voice spoke out:

"We don’t really use the term bomb cyclone,” said Jonathon How from the Bureau of Meteorology. “We just talk about a low-pressure system deepening very quickly because ‘bomb’ can create a little bit more panic and sounds a little bit more scary than what it actually is."

It was a big system, no doubt about it, but no lives were lost, no houses either, the wind blew hard on Tuesday and Wednesday, as it does every time an East Coast Low forms. Which, despite associated headlines, happens roughly once a year. The outlet that said we hadn’t had an ECL “in three years” ran ECL headlines in 2023 and 2024.

“I don’t know why everyone’s making a big deal out of it now,” said a caller to ABC Illawarra, a postman by employment. “Back in the day people would just yell at me for getting their letters wet.”

Which, to be fair, is a postie’s worst case scenario.

- Stu

The Flyer is Swellnet's weekend newsletter.

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