Wild Weather (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Temperature: The Driving Force - 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.

All weather,

no matter how rare or how unusual,

can be broken down into
three simple ingredients.

Wind,

water,



and temperature.

With just those three things,

you can create pretty
much any weather you want.

But the most important of
the three is temperature.

In this program, I'll
discover how, without it,

we wouldn't have any weather at all.

I'll reveal how heat at ground level

can create clouds above us.

How a dust storm,

That's a lot of dust there.

Can bounce dust

more than 2,000 miles.

Almost all our planet's heat

is provided by the sun.

And we tend to think of the sun,

as the source of all our best weather.

If you're looking to unlock
the secrets of the weather,

the heat coming from up there

is not as important

as when it's coming from down there,

from the ground.

I know it sounds unlikely,

but it's all to do with the fact

that the sun heats the earth unevenly.

Sand gets hotter than water.

Tarmac gets hotter than sand.

Concrete gets hotter than grass.

And these differences produce pockets

of warm rising air called thermals

which drive winds and create clouds.

But how can you see that
effect for yourself?

Well, with a quarry,

five vehicles worth of kit,

and two specially-built metal tables.

These tables are going
to be our hot ground.

Because they're dark in color,

they should soak up lots
of heat from the hot sun.

And to make sure they get hot enough,

we're going to give the sun a little help

with 14 gas canisters

all connected up to 18
high-powered burners.

We reckon with these,

we can get our table up to 200 degrees C.

Maybe even higher.

Now I'm hoping that enough

to show you what hot
land does to our weather.

To be perfectly clear,

my ambition here is not to
actually make weather with this.

I'm not hoping a little
square cloud overhead.

The theories right, it's just
the scale is a bit small.

What I will be doing is creating
that rising column of air,

that thermal.

Which is part of the weather,

and it is something I
will be able to show you

once I've got it established.

So let's do just that.

Turn on the gas,

fire up the burners,

and get those metal tables as hot

as we feasibly can,

enabling me to fly some paper helicopters.

Yeah, I know, but bear with me.

Hello.

There is method in this.

Can I have my box of,

Thank you.

Right, going up.

Time for my high-tech thermal indicators.

Now, normally, a paper helicopter

would just spin slowly to the floor.

But it doesn't.

It hovers.

Fly!

There ya go, there ya go, there ya go!

You can see how we've
created a thermal down there,

and the helicopters that catch
it are flying in that column

of rising air.

The updraft is enough to hold
the helicopters in place,

just as they do naturally with clouds,

rain drops, and hailstones.

Yeah.

But as the heat coming off

the metal table increases,

the helicopters begin to climb

until they're disappearing out of sight,

which is how it should be.

A real thermal can reach 1,500 meters.

And they have an important
role to play in our weather.

We've all seen how puddles
dry up on a hot day.

But where does that water go?

Well, those thermals
take it up into the air

until it gets high enough and cold enough

that it condenses back into drops

and forms a cloud.

But there's another result

of this uneven heating of the earth.

It produces deserts.

And deserts play a very important role

in what happens next to those clouds.

It's hard to imagine,
I know, but right now

I am surrounded by desert.

And not just any desert either,

probably the most famous
desert of them all,

the Sahara.

And there it is.

That is Saharan sand.

And it's not just on this car,

it's on all these cars,

and this bench.

Pretty much everywhere, in fact.

Somehow, it's managed to
travel a huge distance

all the way from Africa,

more than 2,000 miles away.

So how on earth did it get here?

Well, first you need a
particularly sun-parched

part of the planet.

And then you need a dust storm.

Dusts storms are the way
nature gets dust off the ground

and into the air.

A big one can easily be a mile high

and a hundred miles wide.

A vast, moving wall of dirt.

But even the big ones

only travel between 25 and 50 miles

before they die out.

So how does the dust
end up 2,000 miles away

on the bonnet of a car in Bristol?

Well, believe it or not, it bounces there.

Let me try and show you what's going on.

Imagine this tennis ball
were a grain of sand.

Drop it from waist height, and
it bounces up about two feet.

Now imagine this ping-pong ball

were a smaller particle of dust.

Drop it from the same height,

and it bounces up about the same distance.

But if I drop them both together,

watch what happens then.

Yeah, the ping-pong ball flies off.

What's happening, actually,
is the ping-pong ball

is smaller and lighter.

All the kinetic energy,
the bounce, in this ball,

is being tranferred into it

and away it goes.

Obviously, real dust comes in many more

than just two different sizes.

Which is why this is
maybe a better analogy.

Four different sizes of ball this time,

stacked loosely on this
plastic spike in the center.

Obviously, real dust
doesn't have a plastic spike

connecting it,

but your alternative is
you watch for 10 hours

whilst I try and drop all four in a line.

Let's see what happens this time.

It's gone.

The small ball is, I mean it's just.

I'd show you again, but I,

I'll have to wait for it

to re-enter the atmosphere, I think.

Seriously, it's gone.

So that's the principle.

But can actual dust
really do the same thing?

Even with the power of a
huge dust storm behind it?

To find out, I'm going to the source

of most of the world's dust.

Not the Sahara,

but South Australia,

where Dr. Craig Strong
has offered to help me

start a dust storm of my own.

What are you actually looking for?

- Well, I'm looking, Richard,

for the landscape that's
gonna produce dust.

And I think this stony plain
is probably really good.

Because you can see these rocks,

they're acting as a trap for dust.

So I think if we dig down,

we'll find that there's plenty of dust,

it's just it means it
hasn't blown away yet

because the rocks are
locking all that dust in.

- So when I see an area of
rocks like this out here,

I assume all the dust has gone.

You think it's trapped underneath.

- Absolutely.

So if we have a look down here, Richard,

once we get under there

it's just dust gold.

Now look at this.

- That's incredibly fine.

- And see, that's just blowing away.

So there's lots and lots of fine material.

This is exactly what we want.

That's what dust storms
are really made of.

- The problem here is
that the dust is trapped

under these stones.

That's why you know it's here,

but it is trapped.

- Absolutely.

- How do we get it out?

- The rocks are doing the
job of protecting the soil,

so I reckon we probably
should pick up the rocks

and move them out of the way.

That's the first step.

- Churn it up a bit.

- Churn it up a bit, that's right.

- That's easy.

I can do this.

I can do that for you.

I'm gonna get started.

Well, I say, "Me,"

but actually I mean this chap, Trevor,

who just happens to have the very tool

for pushing aside all those stones.

It's not long before he's
cleared an oblong area

the size of a couple of football pitches.

And it has an immediate effect.

Look at that dust devil.

That's amazing!

Probably those swirling winds

come through here all the time,

but because we've taken the stones away

and uncovered the dust
for it to be picked up,

we can suddenly see them.

Beautiful.

But it's not what we're looking for.

We want to make something
just that little bit bigger.

One dust storm coming right up.

Right, where do want it?

Here, I would say.

This'll do nicely.

Doing this in what is, effectively,

the home of half of the world's dust,

hope I don't trigger an
international incident.

You get up tomorrow and your
sidewalk's covered in dust

cause I started this.

That's a lot of dust.

Wonder who that bloke is?

Just a helpful local decided
to lend a hand, that's good.

Lot of blokes live around here,

happy to come out,

all in the name of science.

Yeah, now we're talking!

This is a dust storm.

That's a lot of dust there.

And it seems to be working.

In amongst all the cars and chaos,

the dust is starting to bounce.

Individual grains are
colliding against each other,

just like the rubber balls did.

And notice that they're not just bouncing

in the direction of the wind,

they're being propelled upwards.

Well, there it is.

We've got the dust bouncing

just like it does in a real dust storm.

But in a real dust storm,
it bounces much higher.

Much higher than the storm itself.

Can we do that here today?

There is only one way to find out.

Craig has brought in
another dust expert to help,

Professor Nigel Tapper,

who specializes in
measuring airborne dust.

With his assistance, we should
be able to see just how high

we can get our dust to bounce.

- Okay, beautiful.

- Nigel, to be honest,

it looks like this is something

you're about to fire at your balloon.

What is it?

- We've got a pump arrangement here

that pumps about 21/2 liters per minute

through this cyclone sampler

that we can put underneath the balloon

to sample dust at various levels.

That was a

fly.
- Fly.

Yeah, they're quite tasty.

- Yeah, they're beautiful.
- They're not bad.

They're not bad.
- They're particularly

tasty here, but we're--

- A bit dry.

So tie it onto the balloon string then.

- Yup, I just gotta run it through here.

This is the tricky bit,
cause you gotta remember

which way to roll it.

- Yeah, I'll do
this one, I'll do this--

- And we do it on the bottom, too.

- Watch this go well.
- Yeah, you do that.

It's that, I've got it.

Now watch, it's that way.

- Perfect.

- You see.

- You've done it before.

- Well, no, why would I
have done this before, ever?

- Okay.

- Nigel plans to put three dust samplers

under the balloon.

One at three meters,

which was about the height of the cloud

we created with the cars.

One at eight meters,

more than double that height.

And one at 20 meters,

because, well, that's how
much string we've got.

That extra vane at the top is
carrying a miniature camera

so we can keep a close
eye on what's going on.

And to make sure we're doing

our very best impression
of a real dust storm,

we've wheeled in a couple of enormous fans

to supply some extra wind.

So my job now,

is to try and keep the balloon,

which is suspended from
the winch over there

through this hook,

at the right height and in the best place

to catch the most dust kicked up

by our dust storm.

And one important thing to bear in mind,

this all seems very big,

I mean it's a very big balloon,

we're using big tools to make the dust,

but we're imitating the weather.

This whole experiment, in fact, is tiny.

But the principles are just the same,

and hopefully the fine
particles will end up on top.

Or me, if this balloon goes much higher.

I just point out that I'm
the smallest bloke here.

Why I've got this job, I don't know.

We'll be all right.

Right, we ready?

So the vehicle is churning the surface.

The fan's doing the job of the wind.

Maybe I should've put my goggles on.

That would have been better.

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

So, now, I just need to keep the balloon

in the densest part of it.

I'm gonna go over here a little bit.

Basically, if I can't see,

or breathe,

then I'm probably in the right spot.

The different pumps at different levels

are sampling the air, and
the dust carried by it,

at different heights.

There's no way could these fans actually

blow the dust directly

up to 10 or 12 meters.

But they do inject the
energy into the system.

There's an exchange kinetically,

the particles are
bouncing off one another,

hopefully ending up on the top.

But there's only one way to know for sure,

check what's in those pumps.

Luckily, Nigel has a makeshift laboratory

right on site.

- Be really interesting
to crack these open

and see what we've got.

We've got to be a little
bit, a little bit,

clean here.

You gotta be thick-skinned.
- What are you trying to say?

All right, now we've got
the insults out of the way,

time to see what we collected

in the lowest pump.

And if it's not dust,

we've got a problem,

because that was slap bang in the middle

of our homemade dust storm.

- Okay, beautiful.

- Well, there it is.

- We were only sampling for a short time,

and there's a lot of it, as you can see.

- So let's move up a level

to eight meters up into

our homemade dust storm and see--

- That, that's right.

Let's have a look at the filter paper.

Turn it over.

Whoops, you got a slight

there it is
- There it is.

- You got a little bit of something.

So, we've actually got
a bit of fine material

at eight meters.

- Now, at 20 meters.

- At 20 meters--

- Which was well out of

the edge of cloud of dust.

If there is any here,

this is the finer
particles that have managed

to bounce themselves up well beyond

the top of our plume of dust.

- Turn it up the right way.

There we go, well, look--

- There is smudging on it.

- It is, there is a smudge,

so we did get a bit of material

up that far.
- Definitely some there.

So I think we can count that as a success.

We've got dust at least five times higher

than our cloud.

So, we must bear in mind,

with this experiment, though
to us it was quite big,

it's actually tiny.

In terms of the weather it was a minute,

so this upper level, for us 20 meters,

that was outside of our plume of dust.

If that were scaled up to be weather,

to be a dust storm,

that could be thousands of feet high.

- If we were looking at a real dust storm,

making it up to two, 3,000 meters,

it's an amazing process.

- A large dust storm

can move 15 million tons of sand

in a single go.

Many are so big

that they can be seen from space.

And when that dust has
bounced high enough,

it gets caught in global wind patterns

which move it around the planet.

Once in the clouds,

dust plays a crucial role

in our weather.

Because dust is central

to the story of rain.

Water vapor needs something to stick to

if it's going to turn into rain drops,

and dust is perfect.

So down the dust comes,

carried by the water drops.

Out of the sky,

and onto your car.

So without the sun beating down,

creating deserts and dust,

you might not get rain.

Kind of ironic, isn't it?

But there is one rare type of rain

that doesn't need dust.

What is does need, is cold.

It's a weather phenomenon
unlike any other.

One that can take any of these objects

and trap them

like flies in amber,

encasing them in a hard,
plastic-looking shell.

It's called freezing rain.

And, as it's name suggests,

it's completely dependent on temperature.

But it's not just the weather

that needs to be below freezing,

the rain water does.

And I'm gonna try and recreate it for you,

right here, right now.

Actually, I'm probably
in the best possible

place to do that,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Because it happens more here,

than just about anywhere
else in the world.

Right.

Yeah, that's perfect.

Really, very cold, which is what I want.

The air temperature here, right now,

is about minus 10 degrees C.

But as long as it's
somewhere near freezing,

the air temperature doesn't matter.

It's the temperature of these objects.

I need them to be really cold,

and they definitely are.

So, I've got water that's below freezing,

but it's still in liquid form,

and I've got

a hose.

Let's see what happens
when super cold water

hits super cold objects.

It's not complicated.

I've begun.

Well, it might not be complicated,

but it is effective.

The moment the spray hits the hydrant,

it turns, instantly, to ice.

Fully-formed blobs of ice

that appear right in front of your eyes.

So, how does it work?

We've already seen how rain
drops need an impurity,

like dust, to form.

But freezing rain is formed
when a snowflake falls

through a freak layer of
warm air on its way down.

Now it's rain,

but rain without any dust inside it.

The temperature of the drop

can go below freezing

without turning to ice,

until it touches something cold.

It's starting.

This, I feel, is good,

but it's gonna take a while.

I could be patient and wait,

or just tweak my approach a bit.

Bigger, which is better.

The water in the truck

has been outside for days,

so, normally, it would be frozen too.

But firetrucks in Canada

have a constantly
revolving drum inside them

that keeps the water moving,

a bit like a giant slushy drink dispenser.

This is strangely addictive.

I mean, I've done a little bit there,

and I just wanna do everything.

More!

Let's have a go at this.

Certainly, it gets the job done quick.

So, let's see what we've got.

Look at that,

completely encased in crystal clear ice,

and that's exactly what I want.

It's the clarity of the ice

that makes freezing rain so unusual.

That, and the fact that
it completely surrounds

any object it touches.

It's not just icy where
the objects face the hose,

it's icy everywhere

in a perfect, even coating,

leaving the objects rigid, but unharmed.

Um, ish.

There's gonna be shouting about that.

Luckily, freezing rain is fairly rare.

But it does hold the secret

of how we get frost.

Just like our fire hydrant and phone box,

these leaves have cooled below freezing.

The difference is, frost grows

without falling as a liquid first.

The ice crystals just

magically appear,

literally out of thin air.

But when ice crystals
grow in the air instead,

then something even more magical happens.

They become snow.

All snowflakes

start off as an ice crystal,

a six-sided shape a bit like this.

But then temperature
begins to play its part.

Just a little extra moisture in the air

and arms start to fall at the corners.

A degree rise in temperature,

and a plate forms

on one of those arms.

A two degree drop,

and tiny needles fall around them.

Each of these minute changes

stamp their identity onto the ice.

And they are so subtle

that scientists aren't sure

exactly why it happens.

What they do know

is you end up with

something like this.

A snowflake.

Water in its most beautiful

and complicated form.

Except I made this one.

It's all my own work.

Nothing at all to do with
professional snow artist

Simon Beck over there

who's just out for a picnic.

Well, I did the fiddly bits.

I did that bit.

That's mine.

All my own work.

The really cool thing about all of this,

is that every one of these shapes

is different.

I know it's a bit of a cliché,

no two snowflakes are the same,

but they're not.

I guess because of this

infinite number of variations

in temperature and humidity,

every snowflake really is unique.

Not just in a handful of snow,

or in all the snow in
this giant snowflake,

but all the snow that's
ever fallen in the world,

or ever will fall.

That's because the conditions

that create each snowflake

are so unique,

that an individual shape

can never be repeated.

When we think of temperature,

we tend to think of sunshine

or lack of it.

But, in fact, the biggest influence

that temperature has on weather

is controlling the water vapor

in our air.

Evaporating it from the
ground and the oceans,

freezing it into frost and snow,

or condensing it into fog.

I've come to one of the most
predictably foggy places

on the planet.

The Appalachian Mountains

near Blacksburg, Virginia.

Almost every morning,

fog rolls up the Bluestone River

and floods the valley.

This must be one of the off days.

Which is why it's just as well

I'm on this particular road.

Because here, they can make their own fog

at the flick of a switch.

This is the Virginia Smart Road,

a two mile highway designed to test

vehicle and traffic systems

in different sorts of weather.

However, we're going to use
it to take a short diversion

and answer a question
I've often wondered about.

If fog is made of water,

then why isn't it clear?

Why is fog white?

Do you know I've never noticed

how loud fog is.

It's loud, isn't it?

London in Victorian times
must have been deafening.

Luckily, we're not planning
on doing anything with sound.

We're doing it with light.

Light is made up of lots
of different wave lengths,

each a different color.

And we see those colors when
objects absorb one wavelength

and reflect another.

The light from this laser

is scattering off the
tiny particles of fog,

making each one visible.

But we are only projecting
one color here, green,

and they're reflecting it.

The air around them hasn't
reflected any wavelengths,

so it looks black.

Project red, and the
droplets change color.

Same thing with violet.

In fact, they reflect every color.

Add all the different ones together,

and they become white.

Fog is just a cloud

that's in contact with the ground.

So the reason fog looks white,

is the same reason clouds look white.

Because they're scattering
every color of light.

Now, you might be thinking, "Hold on.

"Clouds aren't always white.

"Sometimes, they're black."

Well, yeah, sometimes
they appear to be black,

but that's mainly an optical illusion.

It's your brain exaggerating
any differences there are

to give you what it thinks
is a more useful picture,

and I can demonstrate.

I've cut two holes in
this piece of cardboard,

and if I put one hole
over a white bit of cloud,

and one over what looks like a black bit,

in fact, there's barely any difference.

And what tiny difference there is,

is caused by those minute water droplets

fusing together to form raindrops.

The bigger drops of water
make the cloud more dense,

which makes it harder for
sunlight to pass through,

so we see dark patches
that our brain exaggerates.

But sometimes there's no
doubt that a cloud is black.

The sort of brooding storm
cloud that serves as warning

for one final type of weather.

The type that no show on
weather should be without.

And it's a fitting conclusion,

because it requires all
three of the key ingredients

that we've looked at in this series.

Temperature,

water,

and wind

in equal measure.

When heat makes the ground intensely warm,

and the air is heavy with water vapor,

and strong winds mold the clouds,

you create

a lightening storm.

This is one of the planets
most lightening-prone regions.

Florida, USA.

For most of us,

the most dramatic weather
we're likely to encounter

is thunder and lightening.

We've all heard thunder
and seen lightening.

But, here's the interesting thing,

it is actually possible
to do the exact opposite.

To see thunder, and hear lightening.

And I'm going to show you
one way to hear lightening

right now.

This is a very low frequency detector,

and it can pick up lightening strikes

from thousands of miles away.

As the planet has more than 100
lightening strikes a second,

I should have a fairly good chance

of hearing a few between here

and the other side of the globe.

What you're listening for particularly,

is whistles.

And that is the actual
sound of a lightening bolt

somewhere on the planet.

But if this is the real
sound of lightening,

then what is thunder?

To find out more,

I'll have to visit one of the few

places in the world

capable of creating full-blown thunder.

They do it by firing 200,000
amps of electrical current

down this narrow, copper wire.

Exactly the same amount
as in real lightening.

So this is it, this is
where it's all controlled.

- Yup.

So you'll need a pair of these.

- Really?

- Cause it's going to be quite loud.

- Is it?

- Cause we're gonna be producing thunder.

- Okay.

- So, don't look directly at the arc

cause it's very bright.

- Right, so I've come quite a long way

to see something that I
can't look at or listen to.

- Pretty much.

- Good, okay, brilliant.

Well, I suppose it is
quite a lot of electricity

we're playing with here.

If your kettle goes off,

he's nicked your electricity
to put in their capacitors.

Okay, these on?

- Yup.

- Go.

Have we started?

- Yeah.

- Right.

- So now we see the voltage on the

capacitors.
- Yeah.

So essentially this is gonna build up

a colossal charge, and then discharge it.

- Yup.

- Dan.

- Yup?

- I can hear what you're saying.

- Yeah, when the shock goes through

you might want to put your hands over

the ear phones as well,
cause it is quite loud--

- So let's just cower

under the table

if you don't mind.

Right, it says 25.

- Yup, nearly there.

Okay, so we're ready, so we can fire.

- But I can't look.

- Yup, you can't look--

- Or listen.

That in fact was

quite staggeringly loud.

- Yup

- I mean really, amazingly loud.

- Yup.

- So, was that thunder,

or was is just sort of

the discharge of the electricity leaving

and arriving?

- No, that was thunder.

- But it didn't sound
anything like thunder.

It was just like that.

- Yeah, and that's
because the lightening arc

is only 20 centimeters long here.

In reality, you've got
a kilometer of an arc

that's all producing
sound in every little bit,

and it all arrives as you

standing a couple of kilometers away

at different times.

- Because a bolt of lightening
is around a kilometer long,

some of it is further away
from us than other bits.

So parts of the sound get to us quicker,

meaning that what we
hear is multiple rumbles

of that short, sharp bang.

But it still doesn't tell
us what thunder actually is.

Luckily, Dan has a way to show us.

Using slow motion cameras,

and a line of lit candles.

It's the directors birthday.

We've got another 56 candles to go.

We're gettin' there.

Once again, we return to the control room.

The candles are all blow out.

And if you watch carefully,

you can see that they're
blown out one by one.

So, what is going on?

Well, of course, it's all
to do with temperature.

A typical bolt of lightening

is somewhere between two
and five centimeters wide.

So, something close to that.

These, by the way, are
not for style reasons,

they're for protection.

Because, effectively, I'm
taking a shaft of sunlight

as wide as this screen

and focusing it down

to something roughly the size

of a bolt of lightening.

It is hot,

but it's nothing compared with lightening.

A typical bolt will reach
20,000 degrees Celsius.

That's well over three
times the temperature

of the surface of the sun itself.

Thankfully, it only lasts for
about 1/10,000th of a second.

But that's still enough

for something quite amazing to happen.

Because lightening is so ferociously hot,

it explodes the air around it.

Causing it to burst outwards.

What we see with the candles

is that air moving away
from the lightening bolt

in a shock wave.

But just how powerful is this wave?

Time for another experiment.

Can thunder break these glass light bulbs?

Well I agree, light bulbs are delicate,

but are they delicate
enough to be affected?

- We think so.

We certainly think that the inner ring

of light bulbs will go.

We're not quite so sure
about the outer ring.

Want me to find out?

- Zap 'em, yes!

They've been destroyed by the sheer force

of the hot air exploding outwards.

Well, except that tough one at the back.

It hardly flinched.

But still pretty impressive.

I really want to see this one,

cause I still can't believe
it was strong enough.

- Okay, let's have a look--

- That's a heck of a wave.

Notice, it's not the lightening
destroying the light bulbs.

The arc never even touches them.

It's the shock wave after the
flash that does the damage.

Notice also that the sound of thunder

happens even later

after the flash

and after the bulbs have exploded.

Now, that is a lot of power, isn't it?

A lot of energy.

- Yeah, and that's just from the thunder.

The arc hasn't attached to the light bulbs

so that's the just the shock wave

that's just broken the light bulbs.

- Which tells us how strong
that shock wave can be.

But I want to see more.

What we've been looking at,

impressive though it is,

is the effect of thunder.

I want to look at the thunder itself.

With very specialized cameras,

we can actually attempt to capture

that shock wave on screen.

Not the effects,

but the actual shock wave itself.

Well, that's, no, that's
absolutely brilliant.

That is the air exploding away

from the hot lightening bolt

at over 700 miles an hour.

I think we can count that
one a definite success.

So there you have it.

You can hear lightening,

and you can see thunder.

All because of the incredible temperature

it gets to.

We've seen how temperature drives weather.

How heat gets water into the air.

And cold turns it into clouds.

How warmth creates winds

that can bounce dust

into raindrops.

And tiny fluctuations in temperature

shape snowflakes

and frost.

And it all goes to show

how our weather is endlessly fascinating.

A stunning display of magic and spectacle

performed in front of us

every single day.

Even when conditions
are wet and miserable,

there are amazing events going on

just behind the scenes.

And though it may seem
that only extreme weather

is worthy of our attention,

the weather around us every day

is equally full of wonder.

This is not freak weather,

it's our weather,

and it's astonishing.