I'll start using cold-mageddon when hell freezes over

Before Christmas, some genius (or just bored forecaster trying a social experiment) at Environment Canada thought it would be good to describe three or four days of snow in the lead-up to the holiday as "snow-mageddon."

Inevitably, the media picked up and ran deep with the term. For days it was all you would hear about it newscasts and weather forecasts. While it may be a fun new word, it was surprising the play it got since any weatherman worth his salt would be able to explain that this was far from a disastrous event. Blizzard of '77 -- that was a snowmageddon. Four days spread out over a week with a few inches on each of them and high winds on one of them did not a blizzard make. It really wasn't anything more than a typical Canadian winter.

Today, with high winds and double-digit lows in the old five-day, I expect to hear about cold-mageddon. Hopefully not, as the need to create words like this belittle those who have real problems in the world.