The media (and weather broadcasts) latched onto the term in the 2013/2014 winter, and has been using it ever since. And the media is prone to over-exaggeration,

The media (and weather broadcasts) latched onto the term in the 2013/2014 winter, and has been using it ever since. And the media is prone to over-exaggeration, we know that, no argument. There have even been scientific papers about whether the use of the term is problematic and how to best describe it to non-experts. Even using the word ignorant, as the person you replied to above did, is not a slight IMO (at least, I don't see it that way, I see it, in the context used, as a descriptive term for "the state of not knowing"). The point being, the weather phenomena is not new, nor is using polar vortex to describe it. And just because you hear about something in the media for the first time and it seems exaggerated, that does not necessarily invalidate it or somehow make it a "pedestrian event" being over-hyped. It could be, but in this specific case, it definitely does not. And those words, as explained elsewhere, are the correct words to use from a descriptive point of view. > The earliest scientific papers describing the broad-scale tropospheric or stratospheric flow as a “circumpolar vortex” or “polar vortex” are from the late 1940s and early 1950s. (Although a much earlier usage appears on pg 430 of Littell’s Living Age Map, 12 November 1853.)