Wild Weather (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Wild Weather - full transcript

Weather,

one of the most astonishing
forces on earth.

Capable of both devastating power

and spectacular beauty.

Wherever you live on the planet

weather shapes your world.

Yet for most of us,

how it works is a mystery.

To really understand weather

you have to get inside it.

So I'm going to strip
weather back to basics.



All in the name of science.

Uncovering its secrets

in a series of brave, ambitious,

and sometimes just plain
unlikely experiments.

- Well, it certainly feels
like a dust storm from here.

- To show you weather

like you've never seen it before.

There is a powerful invisible force

that moves around us almost unnoticed.

A force that drives almost
all the extreme weather

on our planet.

That force is wind.

In this program I'll discover how

wind creates that extreme weather.



What it's capable of,

and just how fast it can go.

Along the way...

- Hold on!

- I'll attempt to measure

the speed of a tornado
right next to the ground.

- That's huge!

- I'll create
a whirlwind made of fire...

To discover how a wind

becomes a spinning wind.

And I'll become one of
the few people in history

to deliberately walk into
the middle of a twister.

I'm going in!

This is said to be the
place with the worst weather

in the world.

A place so forbidden

that only the fearless or the foolhardy...

Would want to experience it.

So, has it a guess where we're starting?

This is Mount Washington

in the unlikely location
of New Hampshire, USA.

You wouldn't expect extreme weather

to be found in New England,

but on April 12th, 1934,

Mount Washington weather station measured

one of the fastest wind
speeds ever recorded on land.

231 miles an hour.

In fact, winds here hit hurricane force

more than 100 days a year.

Now, bear that in mind during the next

couple of minutes.

Because I'm about to take a little walk

outside.

Okay.

Just popping out, which
is, as it turns out,

quite a chore out here.

I can not only hear the
wind around this building,

I can feel it.

The whole place is vibrating.

No, I forgot my goggles!

This is, just, do it in the wrong order

and just like that your
eyeballs can freeze.

Any exposed skin will have frostbite on it

within two or three minutes.

Right.

That's my best hat.

I won't get cold with that on.

This is to stop my nose falling off,

which would be bad because

I'd never be able to wear sunglasses again

when I want to.

My gloves.

Okay!

Obviously I am now obliged by law

I'm going outside,

I might be some time.

You notice how cold it is indoors?

At this point, I think I
should try and give you

some idea of what I might be in for...

With a small demonstration.

The lightest wind you
can feel on your face

is about 5 miles an hour.

Enough to rustle this newspaper.

15 miles an hour and your
umbrella gives up the ghost.

25 miles an hour can cause
a deck chair to set sail.

Followed at 30 miles an hour

by your garden furniture.

45 and all hell starts to break loose.

Seemingly rigid structures

suddenly make a break for it.

And at 55 miles an hour

even small buildings are on the move.

So why am I telling you all this?

Because on Mount Washington

it's currently 65mph,

with gusts reaching a
staggering 85 miles an hour.

Believe it or not, I'm actually
sheltered at the moment.

There's hardly any wind right here because

I'm in the lee of the building.

It starts about six feet that way

and then there's a lot of it.

And the only way to demonstrate that is

I'm gonna go and stand in it.

And for reasons best
known to the producers,

Brandon and Shaun, our camera and sound,

have decided to come with me, because

they're idiots.

So um, here we go.

Right, walking.

Not windy, not windy.

This is about 65, maybe 70
miles an hour worth of wind.

But don't forget, this
is the set of one of

the highest wind speeds
ever recorded by man.

231 miles an hour!

How must that feel?

I'd be gone.

They do a calculation
round these parts, where

you take your weight in pounds...

I don't know what I
am, it's about 150-160,

halve it, that's the windspeed at which

you're gonna get into trouble.

Which is about this windspeed.

There are three major storm
systems that meet right here.

So do long distance weather patterns.

And that corner behind me is the most

exposed place, which should make that

the windiest spot on this whole mountain.

Basically, wind is air moving between

high pressure and low pressure,

speeding up as it goes
through narrow gaps...

Slowing down as it hits obstacles.

There are winds near the ground

that blow locally, and
ones high in the air

that can blow long distances.

And that is information you
can use to your advantage.

Right, here's how to amaze your friends.

First, stand with the wind at your back.

Then, you're looking for clouds.

If those clouds are moving overhead

directly away from you,

or directly towards you,

or they're stationary,

then the weather is gonna
stay broadly the same.

If they're moving from left to right,

it's gonna get worse.

If they're moving from right to left,

it's going to improve.

So, right to left = better,

left to right = worse.

Straight down the middle stays the same.

As long as you have your back to the wind.

Unless you're in the southern hemisphere,

in which case you reverse that bit.

Brilliant, isn't it?

Really clever.

Of course it's not 100% foolproof because

weather's really complicated, but it works

more often than not

and that's about as much as you can say

about any form of weather forecasting.

Isn't it?

And the clouds must've been
traveling right to left

upon Mount Washington.

Because the next morning...

Is truly spectacular.

And usually for this time of year

the cloud lifts and the wind subsides.

Slightly.

And I venture back outside

into a suddenly magical landscape.

Folks around here quite
proudly proclaim that

it has the worst weather in the world,

and well, I don't know.

I mean, so be it, yes, but...

Worst?

Not so sure.

But there's no doubt that this is a place

shaped by wind.

It's so windy here

that the buildings have
to be chained down.

Even the ice appears to fly off

in frozen streamers.

These streamers don't
point away from the wind,

they grow towards it, and here's how...

Ice crystals are carried
through the air by the wind.

But the moment they touch an object

they freeze tight.

The next ice crystal to be blown in

freezes to the first.

Gradually building outwards

in the direction they blew in from.

And that gives me an idea.

I thought of another way you can see wind.

I looked around, and a lot of the snow

that I can see in the air isn't falling,

it's being blown by the wind,

sticking to any available surface.

So, I've got a pocket full of
this biodegradable confetti,

just waiting for a good gust.

Watch how the confetti
blows in swirling patterns.

You'd think that at these wind speeds

everything would just get whisked away

in a perfectly straight line.

But it doesn't.

It rolls and carves like
waves crashing onto a beach.

And occasionally those rolling eddies

turn into tightly knit spirals...

In a shape scientists call a vortex.

It's a shape that's crucial to our story,

because almost all the weather we think of

as extreme is based around them.

This isn't just about strong winds.

It's about the other types of weather

that wind can produce.

Dust devils.

Water spouts.

Tornadoes.

All the spinning winds based
on this vortex pattern.

Even hurricanes and cyclones
have the same spiral shape.

But to see how those spirals come about

I'm going to examine
perhaps the most unusual

vortex of them all.

It's called a fire whirl.

And because they're
made entirely of flames,

it's easier to see the twisting structure.

Right here is where I'm
most likely to find one.

The tender, dry forests
of Western Australia.

The vegetation here is so flammable

that any stray match
or lightning strike...

Can have it ablaze in seconds.

There are 50,000 bush
fires a year in Australia,

and almost any one of them

is capable of creating a fire whirl.

But because the fires are so impenetrable,

and because fire whirls
tend to be so short lived,

it's very rare to actually see one.

Which is why the best way
to examine a fire whirl

is to build one.

But I'm not gonna set
about building a fire whirl

on my own, which is why I brought two of

the world's leading
authorities on fire whirls

over from Japan to help.

Dr. Kazunori Kuwana and
Engineer Kozo Sakamoto

have spent many years
looking at how and why

fire whirls spin.

And they've agreed to lend us a hand

to try and start our very own fire whirl.

But I've just discovered
this is the first time

they've built a full scale
one, which is a worry.

Especially when I see them messing about

with baking tins.

Of course, we have the
fire authorities on hand.

But at the moment, they
look like they're just

there to help with the washing up.

Time to find out what's going on.

Chaps, baking tins?

I'm intrigued, how does this work?

- We are trying to create a fire whirl

on top of the baking pans.

We put heptane, a combustable liquid,

in the pans.
- Heptane?

Is that what that is?

- Well this is water.

- You know that doesn't
burn don't you? At all.

- We put heptane on
top of the water layer.

- Okay.

Why are they arranged
in this L configuration?

- If the shape of fire
is entirely symmetric,

the swirling motion wouldn't occur.

So we need some kind of trigger
to create a swirling motion.

- This shape, this asymmetry,

somehow triggers something
that we're going to see?

- Exactly.

- Good.

Will it ultimately get rid of these flies?

Because!

I see why you're wearing these nets.

I thought you were
beekeepers when I arrived.

It's unimaginably unpleasant.

But this isn't merely an
extreme type of pest control.

We're going to see if these 30 baking tins

can help us create a spinning vortex.

Because heat can create winds.

Let me demonstrate with this cooker.

Now, imagine the hobs represent the earth

being heated up by the sun.

Hot air rises off the hob

just as it does from the hot ground,

making the air above the flames less dense

and therefore lower pressure.

But the cold air around the oven

is still at normal
pressure, so it rushes in

to fill the gap, turning
these children's windmills.

And we can prove that the air
is rushing towards the flames

with the smoke from this match.

Higher pressure air rushing towards

lower pressure air.

That is the basis of wind.

Using flames only accentuates the effect.

Which is why a massive fire

is the best way to create
our own extreme wind.

But it still doesn't tell
us how that extreme wind

can start spinning.

What we need is a small experiment.

So let's see what happens
when Kazu and Kozo

light those tins with
highly flammable heptane.

If they're right, the L
shape will spontaneously

trigger a fire whirl.

Next we'll introduce some colored smoke

to see if our eye in the sky

can capture the wind patterns at work.

Right, let's give it a go.

Time to stand well back.

At first it all seems a bit underwhelming.

It looks, well, it looks
like 30 baking tins on fire.

But as cold air rushes in...

It feeds the flames.

And then, quite suddenly,

they begin to spin.

There it is!

The spin seems to intensify
the fire even more.

The flames grow higher...

And higher...

Until they tower above us.

It's massive!

A real life fire whirlwind.

Just like we did with the cooker,

we're going to introduce some smoke.

The crosswind is so strong that the smoke

stays close to the ground,
and on the far side

it blows in a pretty straight line.

But on this side, parts of
it bend around the L shape

and get sucked in towards it.

Let me try and explain
what's happening here.

Here's our L.

When the wind comes from this direction

it rolls around the end of it here,

and it's drawn towards this fire.

But it's also drawn towards this one here,

and that sets it spinning,
that starts our vortex.

The vortex rolls along
the long arm of the L

and when it gets to the fire here

it intensifies.

And this is where our
fire whirl is formed.

The cold air show by the smoke

is trying to rush in
two directions at once.

That creates those little green swirls

and ultimately our fire whirl.

Now, obviously you don't generally find

baking pans in the wild, but natural

Ls occur, each creating their own

opposing winds.

And that's also pretty much how

other types of spinning weather start.

Two or more winds meeting
at different angles

and speeds, some rising warm air,

and cold air rushing in to fill the gap.

Just those simple ingredients

can produce some of the most

extreme forms of weather we have.

Including the most powerful
and deadly wind of them all.

The tornado.

Because a tornado is spinning,

it can move far faster than a normal wind.

Not in a straight line,

but in the speed that they can spin.

And it's that spin that does the damage.

Look at it this way...

If I'm spinning this
bucket around my head,

it's not how fast I'm walking towards you

that dictates how hard it will hit you

when I get there.

Even if I walk really quickly

that speed's irrelevant.

It's how fast I'm spinning
the bucket that matters,

and what's in it to add to the weight.

And that's how it is with a tornado.

Debris does most of the damage,

that's the weight in the bucket.

The most destructive force

in the tornado itself is its spin,

its rotational speed.

Which is why it's remarkable

that's the part of the tornado
we know the least about.

I'd like to find out why.

And who better to ask

than the Center for
Severe Weather Research

in Boulder, Colorado.

I make an appointment with
its President, Josh Wurman,

to ask him why that spin speed

is still such a mystery.

- Scientists have gotten
very good at measuring

the winds above the ground in the tornado.

Maybe from 50 meters above the ground

up to a couple kilometers.

But the strongest winds in
the tornado are below that.

We think the strongest
winds in the tornado

might even be below 10 meters.

Using remote sensing with radars,

we can get up close, we
can scan back and forth,

but unfortunately objects block us.

There's debris,

pieces of houses, cows, whatever,

flying around in the tornado,

and that's the one place
where we are the most blind.

- Why isn't there just a machine that

you can point at a tornado and measure it?

I mean, it is moving past.

Why can't you just measure it?

- There are main challenges
within situ measurements.

The first is how to get
something inside the tornado.

The tornado is moving down the fields

and we don't know exactly how it's going.

It's an unpredictable path.

So getting something in
front is very, very hard.

Challenge number two is what
happens when we succeed.

The tornado
runs over the object

and destroys it.

So unfortunately, the place
that we most need to know about

is the place that's hardest for us to see.

If we can understand that better,

then engineers would be able
to build better buildings,

we'll be able to have better shelters,

and fewer people will get
injured and die in tornadoes.

- But how would you begin

to measure the speed of a tornado

right next to the ground?

To try and find that out we must travel

another 1300 miles to the
distinctly un-tornado-like

landscape of London, Ontario.

And one remarkable building.

I'm gonna do something

a person wouldn't normally do.

I'm going in.

I'm in!

This is it.

I'm in the eye of it.

And...

All I can say is...

Yes.

This feels as amazing
as I suspect it looks.

I'm in a tornado.

It's the most astonishing feeling.

It's dizzying!

The whirl is roaring past
and spinning round me, but

I'm still.

This is massively scaled down of course.

A real one would be maybe

100 times bigger, and the wind

moving four, five times faster, but

nevertheless you get a
sense of the relentless,

terrifying power of one of
these things in the wild.

That is the most daunting sight.

I've got goosebumps, and not
just cause it's cold in here.

I can feel the edges of it,

feel it moving.

It's like I'm touching its planks.

It is a living, breathing thing.

It's a living, breathing, furious thing.

This is the Wind Engineering
Energy and Environment

esearch Institute, or WindEEE for short.

And it's the only place on the planet

capable of duplicating
the real life dynamics

of a tornado.

It does it by using 106 giant fans

hidden behind the walls and ceiling

of the world's first
examining wind tunnel.

The whole structure
cost 23 million dollars.

And we are pretty much
the first visitors ever

to set foot inside.

Which makes it all the more delicate

asking its boss, Professor Horia Hangan,

for a little favor.

Just while we're here,

in this facility,

I'd really like to just have a little look

at velocities, sort of,
that way in tornadoes.

an we have a, I'm gonna
say, it's an experiment

in here with it?

So you mind if we make a bit of a mess?

Not a massive mess.

There might be, we'll sweep up.

You won't know we've been here.

Everything will be gone.

- That's fine, we can do a
little bit of a mess, yes.

We are prepared to catch
some stuff with you

to throw into it.

- Might happen. Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- Our mess is going to consist

of these pink foam squares.

They're light enough to be
sucked up by the tornado,

but big enough for us to track them.

If we can get those foam squares trapped

in the tornado, and if we can get them

lifted up and spun ‘round,
without being spat out,

then we might be able to
time how long it takes one

to do a full lap.

That is a lot of ifs, I know,

but fingers crossed.

- I'm going to start the fans.

- See?

There it is!

Looking good, yeah?

Yeah!

That's fantastic, there it is.

That's exactly what we
wanted, so they're held in.

Okay, now we've got the foam
squares circling successfully,

it's time to turn on
the tracking technology.

The computer follows individual squares,

one after another...

So it can create an average speed

from the different trajectories.

And it works.

According to the computer,

it's spinning at a shade
over 22 miles an hour.

The first time one has ever been measured

this near the ground.

Now, obviously,

a real tornado is about 100 times bigger

and much, much faster.

But now we know we can fly things

in a fake tornado, it stands to reason

we can get them to fly inside a real one.

Problem is, how we
gonna get them in there?

I'm not standing next to it with a bucket.

I have tried some things...

None of them really worked.

I need help with this.

So I've made contact with a scientist

who says he might have a solution.

He's asked me to meet him here,

in, well, as it turns out,

the middle of nowhere.

This bizarre vehicle is the Dominator III,

a hand-built tornado proof armored car.

And as meteorologist Reed Timmer explains,

it's one of a kind.

- There's not other vehicle like this.

It's just one big
meteorological instrument.

It's like a mobile tornado probe.

- Has it ever been in
the base of a tornado?

- This has.

This is the Dominator
III, so this is brand new.

Last year we intercepted
three or four tornadoes.

- What happened to Dominators I and II?

Gone?

- No, they're still on the ground.

Thankfully.

- What I want to know is:

what are the chances
of using the Dominator

to measure the speed of a
tornado near the ground?

- Near the base of the tornado is

one of the biggest mysteries
of tornado science,

and it's also the most
important to understand

because it's those wind
speeds that directly impact

the structures and cause the destruction

that we see with tornadoes
every spring and summer.

That's why we built this
vehicle, is to get up close

if not inside those, and
unravel those mysteries.

- So if you could get this into a tornado

you could employ something into it

that would allow you physically to measure

the rotational wind speed.

- Yeah.

- It is roughly what I was
doing with bits of foam

in the indoor artificial tornado,
it's just with a real one.

It is, presumably, quite
incredibly dangerous.

- Yeah, there is a level
of risk involved, but

as a storm chaser all I've
done since I was 18 years old

is get close to tornadoes.

- Which really
begs just one question:

Are you a scientist, an
adrenaline junkie, or a lunatic?

- Probably all of the above.

- Okay.

Reed sounds like the
perfect person for us.

Using the Dominator,

he can get really close to a tornado

and he's already thought
about how he could fire

a data recording probe right into it.

- So I wanted to stop right here

because just south of our position

right down there, was an
F5 tornado back in 1999

and they recorded the
strongest wind speeds

ever recorded on the planet:

over 300 miles an hour, right
down here just to our south.

- In less than 21 hours

74 tornadoes touched down in the states of

Oklahoma and Kansas.

The most prolific outbreak in history.

But the most destructive of them all

was right here.

In the 60 minutes or so of its existence

its phenomenal spin speed caused more

than a billion dollars worth of damage.

Scientists measured the winds inside it

at 300 miles an hour.

But those speeds don't
tell the whole story.

- Those winds were measured
higher up above the ground,

and who knows how strong
those wind speeds were

right near the surface of the
strongest tornado in history.

- And that came through
right where we are?

- Yeah.

- So, if this were a real situation,

what do you say?

Hot? Live? Whatever.

If it were coming towards us

and you're here with this,

what happens then?

- Well we'll look to the southwest.

If it's not moving side to side at all

it's likely coming right
at us, so I'll line up

that left edge and make
sure we're in the path,

then we'll drop the vehicle
flush to the ground;

I'll show you here really quick.

And we're inside of course.

- Well yeah, that would be a good idea.

That's supposed to happen.

- Yeah.

And then the spikes
also go into the ground.

And then there's the probe, right there.

And a parachute will pop up
when it's at peak flight,

just 50 feet up, and it gets
sucked into the tornado.

- So if everything's working perfectly,

that probe will have gone out of there

and ended up in the tornado, spinning

around and getting that
critical rotation speed.

- Yeah, the tornado will pick it up.

There's updrafts in the funnel as well.

It'll pick up the parachute,
it'll spiral around inside,

measuring temperature,
moisture, and pressure

at a rate of five times a second.

- All of that will happen.

- It's going to one of these years.

- Okay, good luck.

- Thank you.

- You never know.

So there we have it.

The Dominator is going to take the place

of our woman with a bucket.

And its compressed air-powered roof cannon

does the job my catapult
and paintball gun couldn't.

Now all they need to do

is find a real, live tornado

and park next to it.

Obviously that could
take a very long time,

so Reed and his team are
on their own from now on.

No film crew with them, just them

and the Dominator, and a
very ambitious mission.

It actually takes six weeks,
but finally Reed and his crew

are hot on the heels of
a real, live twister.

The trick now is to get
as close as they dare.

Close enough to fire a probe
straight into its heart.

But finding that heart turns
out to be pretty tricky.

- That's our GPS
position and that's the tornado.

About two miles to our southeast.

We're getting real close.

It's right here.

- A tornado
can travel at about

70 miles an hour across the ground.

- Right here guys, stop right here.

- And change direction

quickly and without warning.

Which makes getting ahead of one...

Incredible difficult.

- Right there!

- And they
need to get to it quick.

- We gotta go! Turn it around!

- The lifespan
of the average twister

is just five to ten short minutes.

- Alright, let's go.

- There it is, on the right.

There, on the ground, right there.

Straight ahead, cut it.

Go!

- That's huge!

- It is huge.

About 100 meters across

and at least a kilometer tall.

- Perfect.

This is it.

Let's stop.

My god.

- The tornado
is coming straight for them.

Get ready to shoot!

- It's perfect.

- Drop it down!

- Not the best time

for the Dominator's window to fail.

- Roll your window up, Reed.

Roll your window up!

- Fuck!

- We're in it.

- Shoot! Shoot the probe!

- It's in.

They got the probe inside.

- I saw it make one full revolution

then I lost a visual on it, so I know

it at least went around one time.

- But that's
only half the challenge.

Now they need to retrieve it
to find out what it recorded.

They wait for the storm to pass,

then set off out through
the trail of devastation

in search of the probe.

- So how far
ahead do you think it is?

- Probably about
3 miles I would say.

- For some reason

they're not picking up its GPS signal

so they're reduced to searching on foot.

- When I watched it I saw it go

out over the road that way,

it spun around like this,

all the way around,
and it descended either

behind these trees or
these trees right here.

So we're within a couple
hundred of the location.

So it's gonna be somewhere
in this area over here.

- Against all the odds,

they spot it!

But the probe is damaged.

Its trip around the twister
has torn away the housing,

leaving the electronics exposed.

So were they successful?

The moment I get word,
I'm straight on to Reed

to find out.
****

Hi Reed!

You got the thing into a tornado?

- Yes we did.

- Was that a special moment?

- It was a very special moment, and it was

a very scary moment too, honestly.

I think I might be
getting a little too old

for these tornado intercepts, but our ears

were popping form the pressure fall,

it was a pretty intense tornado, and

seeing the probe take off was

definitely an amazing feeling.

- So you've got it, you've got the probe?

The information is stored on
it, and what we want to know

is the speed at the base,
and at the different heights

of the tornado.

That data is possibly on the probe?

- I'm betting it's on the probe.

But we'll be able to get it off here.

It should be any week, any day now.

- We've got so close!

I mean, yeah, there it is.

A lot of that.
- Both of them.

- Okay.

Reed and his team have
accomplished something

that no one has ever done before.

They've managed to get a flying probe

into the base of a tornado.

- Today is the first
time we've recovered one

that we know was inside a tornado, so

this is a huge success
for our science mission

and I'd say it's
definitely a stepping stone

for things to come in the future.

- It's a proud moment.

Unfortunately,

the probe turned out to
be too badly damaged.

So, they're planning on
doing it all over again.

We've discovered what winds are

and how they begin...

How their paths can be used
to predict the weather.

We've seen the way a
wind can start to spin.

And how spinning winds are the basis

for much of our extreme weather.

More than anything we're one step closer

to revealing one of
weather's greatest mysteries:

how fast a tornado can spin.

But for the moment, the actual answer

is still a weather secret.

Next time...

I try and capture a cloud

to see just how much one really weighs.

This is a fairly unusual
exercise, cloud collecting.

I discover what would happen if rain

fell in one big lump.

I test the astounding hardness of hail.

And the unbelievable speed...

Of an avalanche.

I'm speechless.

Genuinely speechless.