Focusing on the crucial role water plays in the weather, this film focuses on several calamitous events: a freak flood which swept through the town of Lynmouth in Devon in 1952, destroying 94 buildings and killing 34 people; a rainstorm which killed 144 people in the Big Thompson Canyon in Colorado in 1976; and a 1993 flood which destroyed 40,000 homes in Valmeyer, Illinois. There is also a report from Bombay, where the monsoon is 40 days late and rain is eagerly awaited.
Tornadoes are especially prevalent in the American Mid-West. This film examines the relationship between tornadoes and lightning, with a look at the massive tornado in April 1991 which devastated the McConnell airbase in Wichita, and NASA footage of lightning seen from outer space – including ‘sprites’ and ‘jets’ forming in the air above storms, and lightning striking planes and rockets. Finally, we take to the road with amateur storm chasers in the Mid-West.
The extraordinary relationship between the sea and the sky is at its most frightening when it appears in the form of a hurricane; while scientists and lucky survivors recall Hurricane Andrew, which hit Florida in 1992 and resulted in one of the USA’s worst natural disasters, the programme also looks at attempts to tame hurricanes, and follows hurricane chaser Richard Horodner. Also featured is the mysterious ocean phenomenon called El Nino, and the Great Storm which hit the UK in 1987.
Winter is a season of contradictions. We may long for it to come, yet it can paralyse a continent and shape the course of history. This film visits Oymyakon in the far east of Siberia – the coldest town on earth, whose inhabitants may endure temperatures of minus 70 degrees centigrade – Mount Washington in New England, with an average of 250 inches of snow a year, and the Glencoe region of Scotland. The film also looks at the coldest British winter this century, in 1962-63, and people who have survived appalling mountain blizzards recall their experiences.
