Eerie Events Wild & Weird

# Marauding mice and walls of ice

# Sharks on a golfing spree

# Cicadas swarms and Martian storms

# And fish walking out of the sea

# Elks in trees and foaming seas

# And giant mayfly mobs

# Zombie snails and friendly whales

# And completely frozen frogs. #

You what?!

# Wild and weird, wild and weird

# Really, really wild and really, really weird

# Wild and weird, wild and weird

# Really, really wild

# And really, really wild and weird. #

Coming up on today's show, some eerie events.

An island invaded by a moving carpet.

The city that went all Martian overnight.

And the cloud that looks like a UFO.

That is weird.

That is weird. That is the weirdest thing I have ever seen.

What is?

-That is.

-There's nothing there.

Exactly.

My Nanny Hughes sent me a large chocolate cake.

I left it there for just five minutes.

Now I have returned here, and it is completely missing.

-Oh, well that is rather strange, isn't it?

-Mmm.

-What is that?!

-Er...

-Eye-liner?

-On your chin?

I wasn't wearing my glasses. Anyway, shall we watch some TV?

I've got some other eerie events you might be interested in.

-I'll get some popcorn.

-Oh, no, don't bother. I'm quite full.

We're off to Australia, and just look at what happened

to its largest city Sydney one morning in 2009.

From country to city,

people woke up this morning to an eerie red haze,

the likes of which many had never seen before.

Someone, or something, had really painted the town red.

Are you sure that's Sydney? It looks more like Mars.

No, definitely Sydney.

And its citizens were recording these eerie events.

It's unbelievable!

Absolutely amazing.

It's 6.30 in the morning. Look at this town.

I woke up, and I was like, what is going on?

This is, you know, like the Apocalypse,

or it's like Armageddon has actually hit Earth.

Nate Johnston documented a bizarre commute to work.

It was really eerie.

I catch the same ride, you know all the scenery,

and not being able to see anything in front of you

was almost a bit freaky.

That is crazy.

I know! Everything is red.

Getting the M40 bus at 7.20 in the morning, with rush-hour traffic!

What a sucker for punishment.

He should have changed at Milson's Point

and then got the ferry across and then walked - much quicker.

Oh. Have you lived in Sydney?

No, I've never been.

I tell you what was crazy though.

Did you see all the red stuff? What was up with that?

Well, the source of this incredible phenomenon lay 1,500 miles away,

deep in the heart of Australia's outback. Dust.

Iron rich and deep red,

this is what had caused Sydney's extraordinary transformation.

Dust carried all the way from the remote desert centre

by a storm of truly epic proportions.

Atmospheric scientist Craig Strong is a keen follower of these storms.

I reckon a good dust storm is one you can taste.

You know, you can taste it in your mouth,

you can roll it in your teeth,

and you can say, yes, that's about 10 microns in size.

What's a micron?

It's an internationally recognised standard unit of length

-equalling 0.001mm.

-Yeah.

What's a micron?

It's a way of measuring dust.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, I knew that. Yeah.

Craig predicted the storm's arrival.

He'd been watching the signs develop for several months.

We had floods in January bring sediment

into the inland parts of Australia.

We had droughts in the arid and semi-arid parts of Australia.

And then we had a really intense cold front move through.

It created very strong winds.

All the conditions were right to produce

an incredibly large dust storm.

In fact, the storm contained around 16 million tonnes of dust.

That's enough dust to...

I'll stop you there.

Please, allow me. I've got this. Oh, yes.

Yes, you see, extrapolating from your initial valuation

of 16 million tonnes, which is here, OK?

And taking into account the atmospheric gases,

which we in the maths circle refer to as wind,

I have deduced that that storm had enough mass and velocity to...

..strip the flesh from your bones!

I think you might have made a small error in your calculations, Tim.

How dare you?

A maths genius is never wrong.

What we can say with a degree of accuracy

is that the storm was 600 miles long and 300 miles wide.

A monstrous cloud rolling across Australia.

Stripping the flesh from everything in its path.

As it travelled across the country,

stunned Australians recorded the incredible spectacle.

It's absolutely amazing.

There's no way they'll drive into that.

They'd never survive, no way. Turn around any second.

That is going to strip the flesh from their bones in a flash.

They'll turn around any second. Watch this, they will.

They're just going to turn around now...

Um... Oh!

-Oh, their flesh has been ripped from them!

-They were fine.

It might look like the end of the world,

-but in fact the storm was absolutely harmless.

-Oh, really?

And, rather than flee in terror,

the residents of Sydney went about their day as normal,

thankful to be part of one of

the most remarkable natural spectacles on Earth.

Or Mars.

It was phenomenal.

You know, being able to witness such a phenomenon.

I don't think I will in my lifetime again, to be honest.

Do you know what?

That reminds me about another eerie tale of a place turning red.

Oh, yeah?

Only this time it's set on the shores of Christmas Island.

-I love Christmas Island!

-Do you?

Snow, reindeer, fir trees... Oh...

You don't really know where Christmas Island is, do you?

Er...duh! Tim!

It's in the North Pole!

Obviously.

Yeah. OK...

Christmas Island. A remote tropical paradise in the Indian Ocean.

Surrounded by crystal blue seas and covered with lush, green jungle.

-So, no elves then?

-No, no elves.

However, there is something equally fantastic because once a year,

those blue seas and green jungles are invaded by this.

A blanket of red creeping across the land like an eerie moving carpet.

-It's happened. It's finally happened!

-What's happened? What?!

It's the baked bean invasion.

I warned them this would happen but they didn't believe me.

Phone your mum and dad, tell them to run for the hills.

-What are you going on about?

-Mum? I told you the day would come!

-It's the baked...

-They're not baked beans!

The... Baking day.

Yeah.

Just wanted to make sure you knew, that's all. Bye.

Yes, they're not baked beans.

What are they then?

Well, if you look a little bit closer you'll see

that they're actually millions upon millions of baby red crabs.

Where have they all come from?

They've emerged from the sea

and are heading for the jungle where they will grow into adults crabs.

This island is the only place in the world these particular crabs

are found, and they've been so successful here it's estimated

there may be up to 30 million of them living on the island.

Their annual march takes them straight through the local village.

Imagine having all of those turn up on your doorstep.

I know, and that's only half the story.

Because when they've grown up and become adult crabs,

they make the journey back in the other direction.

Heading for the sea to mate and lay their eggs,

starting this amazing life cycle all over again.

Whoo-hoo!

So, if you ever go for a stroll on Christmas Island,

you might want to tread carefully.

Hey, Tim.

-Why wouldn't the crab share his toys?

-Go on.

Because he was shellfish!

-That's terrible.

-Oh, come on. Don't get crabby.

-All right, all right.

Listen, if I show you something else eerie,

do you promise you'll stop with the crab puns?

OK. But make it snappy!

These next natural events are so strange and eerie

they simply defy all explanation.

Look at this.

Mystical balls of fluff that hover in the air.

Um, those are clouds, Tim.

Condensed water vapour. Nothing mysterious about that.

Ah, but have you ever seen a cloud like this?

-We're back in Australia, in a place called Burketown.

-Burketown?!

Leave it!

Every spring, if you look up,

you'll see these eerie clouds,

unexplainable rolling pin shapes,

destined to remain a mystery for ever.

That is a morning glory cloud.

How do you know that?

-My mate Gavin told me.

-Who's Gavin?

Gavin is a cloud spotter extraordinaire.

A cloud spotter?!

Yes, it's like a train spotter, only with clouds.

And what can he tell us?

It's not like clouds are the expressions on the face

of the atmosphere, is it?

The clouds are expressions on the face of the atmosphere.

Yes, but you can't really read those expressions, can you?

It's not like a person.

And they can be read like the expressions on the face of a person.

Yes, well that's his opinion, isn't it?

When it arrives, this cloud looks very dramatic.

You see this tube rolling along towards you,

and then as it passes over, the sky becomes overcast,

and then as it moves on, the sky clears again,

so it's quite an experience

when one of these morning glory clouds passes over.

Yeah, but does he know how they're made?

-The peninsular gets heated up by the sun during the day.

-Oh, he does.

The sea breezes come in both sides, collide, and set off this wave.

Within that wave of air, a roll of cloud can form.

OK, OK.

I'll give him that one, but what about this?

An ominous cloud that rises up from the earth

like a giant monstrous mushroom.

What's that then, Gavin?

The cumulo-nimbus is known as the king of clouds.

This is because of its size.

It can reach 10, 12 miles up into the sky.

The energy within one of these enormous cumulo-nimbus clouds

is equivalent to the energy of ten atom bombs.

All right, all right.

If he gets this one, I will eat my hat.

Because these spooky saucer-shaped clouds

are 100% certain to remain unidentified flying objects.

The lenticularis cloud.

The process that causes them to form is all to do with the wind,

the air having to rise to pass over a mountain.

They can look remarkably like UFOs,

so you have one disc here

and then almost a little gap and then a disc on top,

which looks rather like the sort of pod that the aliens would sit in,

I suppose.

Is that all you've got then?

Well, no.

I've got one more for you actually.

Have a look at this.

Look, see?

There's a giraffe shaped one there.

I bet you can't tell me what those are.

That is some cotton wool stuck on blue card

-that you got Nathan the cameraman to film.

-Impossible.

How did you see through my brilliant deception?

Because he's standing right there.

-Shall we go and do something else?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

THUNDER CRASHES

Now that really is eerie!

# Wild and weird, wild and weird

# Really, really wild and really, really weird

# Wild and weird, wild and weird

# Really, really wild

# And really, really wild and weird. #

Wild and weird!