Friday, April 07, 2006
Weather records…
...have a short shelf life. Just four years ago, the Elbe River here in Germany flooded, and it was called the flood of the century. Admittedly, it's a bit risky to set up a record like that in 2002, so early in the new century. Now the inevitable has happened. This spring the river is flooding higher than it did then. So what do you call it? The new flood of the century? The real flood of the century? The even better flood of the century? The whiter than white flood of the century? The flood of the millenium? The problem with the latter is, the millenium is just as new as the century, and it has to last a lot longer!
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2 comments:
Hyperbole such as 'flood of the century' is a very abused trope these days, and often misunderstood by the media. But I suppose given the preference for instant gratification and the prevalence of short attention spans, such a term can be used serially and several times before many twig on. Eventually I would expect it will become seen as handy recourse or fallback of hack journalism.
I just bought a used copy of one of my old favorite horror movies - "Jaws", which has a number of sequels. So . . . in that vein, I offer. FotC II; FotC 3-D (it's only frightening if you have those funky cardboard and cellophane glasses on); FotC The Revenge (the river does in the dams and levees with a vengeance); and etc. . . . :-) Seriously, though, we have a lot of flooding here in Oregon, and some of it quite dramatic. Folk here seem just content to call each 'The Flood' of such-and-such a year.
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