Falling into the ‘snap’ trap

Sir, – I find it difficult to understand why the media persist in referring to the current unseasonably cold weather as a “cold snap”.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a cold snap as "a sudden brief spell of cold weather". I do not believe the cold weather we have been experiencing over the past six weeks or so, and which the meteorological service has certified as the coldest March on record, could by any stretch of the imagination be described as either sudden or brief. – Yours, etc,

JOHN WHELAN,

Herbert Road,

Bray,

Co Wicklow.