The eye of tropical cyclone Belal reached Reunion Island on Monday morning. The island has been placed on purple alert, the highest level of security. "Being in the eye of the storm" has become a common phrase, but it is often misused. Whether in the newspapers or on the radio, the fault is recurrent. As a reminder, a "cyclone" is a "mobile atmospheric disturbance organized around a center of low pressure, characterized by large wind movements, which converge from the edges to the center, then are ejected aloft" (CNRTL).
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The "eye of the storm" refers to the area of calm winds and mild weather in the centre of the cyclone, where the atmospheric pressure is very low. There is an apparent calm. This area, spared by the storm, is bounded by the Wall of the Eye, a wall of thunderstorms where the weather conditions are most extreme. However, this expression is used in the sense of "being in the eye of the storm", i.e. being the target of all attacks and dangers, which is a misinterpretation based on the scientific definition of the eye of the storm.
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"Being in the middle of the storm", "being in turmoil
»This error in usage is probably due to "confusion with other expressions constructed in a similar way" such as "being at the heart of the storm" or "being in turmoil", argues the Académie française, which also regrets the loss of the original meaning of the expression "being in the eye of the storm" to now evoke the situation of a person who happens to be the target of all dangers. "Be that as it may, let us beware of imitating this mistake and restore the true meaning of the 'eye of the storm,'" the Immortals recommend.
In conclusion, "being in the eye of the storm" means that we are in a lull, but a calm that we must be wary of before the storm returns. For example, Ouest-France wrote at the end of December about the former basketball player Emilie Gomis that she "has been in the eye of the storm for several days after one of her Instagram stories was put back on the front of the stage on social networks". It is easy to imagine that the diary did not mean that she was going through a period of calm but that she was going through a storm.