Wind Wild Weather

Weather is the last truly wild thing on Earth.

We can't predict it and we can't control it.

I'm Donal MacIntyre and I'm about to journey around the world

to seek out the wildest weather there is.

'In this series, I'll experience the fastest winds on Earth...'

136 miles an hour!

'..the awesome cycle of water around the planet...'

I've been... I can't talk!

'..I'll take a ride into the cold heart of winter...'

It might be unconventional, but it gives you a once-in-a-lifetime view on the top of the w-o-r-l-d! Woo!

'..and experience the dark side of summer...'

-CRACKING

-1.5 million volts through my finger.

I'm going to get blasted, roasted,

soaked and frozen, because I want to understand how the weather works,

the awesome forces that drive it and how it affects us all.

I'll meet those that have survived the worst it gets,

and try to understand why the weather is changing and what that means for the future.

It's going to be the ride of a lifetime!

This is Wild Weather.

Our Earth is vast - 24,500 miles around,

but all our weather takes place within this thin blue streak.

It's through that thin blue streak that I'm now about to go - to the very top of the weather.

Bill, hi.

Are you ready for this?

JET SCREAMS

Even in a jet it takes a day to circle the Earth,

but I can fly through the weather in minutes if I go...straight up!

'316 Bravo. Flight 2. Clear for takeoff.'

Right around here, about a mile or so up, is where the rain clouds start.

This is where it all comes from.

For the next few miles, billions of gallons float around in the clouds, just waiting to turn into rain.

But they don't go on forever. So, if you want a bit of sunshine, all you have to do is this...

JETS SCREECH

For every mile we climb, the air cools by 17 degrees Celsius.

From here, about five miles, you can look DOWN on a thunderstorm,

look into the eye of a hurricane

or even hitch a ride on the back of the jet stream - the fastest wind on Earth.

And this is it! Six-and-a-half miles up.

The weather stops here.

At this height, the air stops cooling

and remains a constant minus 50 degrees Celsius.

All the moisture in the air has dried out.

This freezing layer of dry air is called the tropopause.

It acts as a lid, trapping all our weather below.

Way above, you enter the stratosphere -

an almost completely weather-free zone -

and beyond it...space.

It's amazing to think that below me now is every kind of weather imaginable.

We're going to start the series by taking a journey with the winds.

In the next hour, I'll experience everything from a breeze to the fury of a tornado.

In a few heart-stopping moments, I'll be back down there

to see how it all begins. ..Take it away, Barry!

Woo!

Having shot to the top of the weather, I took the easy way down.

Below me is the equator and the start of my journey with wind.

And this...

is where it all begins.

This is where the wind...

is actually born.

It's hot. Damned hot.

What's really strange is, there's no wind.

And that's because...

this is the doldrums!

So how is it that there are no winds where the winds are born?

The doldrums are a strip of complete calm, five to ten degrees either side of the equator.

The intense energy of the sun heats the air,

which rises in huge columns,

sucking in powerful surface winds from north and south.

The only movement of air is up,

so the areas underneath remain calm and windless.

This rising air is the first part of a massive global wind cycle

which will take it right across the world.

To follow the start of the wind's journey, follow this.

Down here, at sea level, my leaf drifts lazily

until it is lifted up by the rising warm air.

Way above, a huge pattern emerges.

The world's winds are locked into an endless cycle.

If you could see it, it'd look like this.

Warm air rises from the equator and hits the tropopause.

It slides north and south before sinking back to Earth,

back to the equator as the winds we feel on land or sea.

This process repeats itself in a further two wind cycles, both north and south.

These cells balance the temperature between the freezing poles

and the sweltering equator.

The Earth's air-conditioning system.

If it didn't exist, the poles would be 25 degrees colder

and the equator would be 14 degrees hotter.

And all this from a place of dead calm...

In the days of sail, finding yourselves adrift in the doldrums

was every sailor's nightmare.

Water was limited. When it was gone, so were your chances of survival.

Stuck here with just my book is how countless sailors must have found themselves.

'We came across a calm so endless

'that we saw no end in it, except death.'

That's how one sailor remembered it.

Nowadays, it's hard to imagine the torture of waiting for the wind

that many sailors had to endure.

But, if you survived long enough,

the winds would come again.

That's because the doldrums follow the seasons.

As summertime moves from the northern to the southern hemisphere,

the areas of intense heating that create the doldrums

move south, dragging them with it.

Then the winds created by that huge global system eventually return.

I can feel that breeze. Let's go.

Every wind on Earth begins its cycle here.

To see what they can do, I'm off to experience all I can

of this invisible force.

From a tornado's fury to the gales of the Pacific ocean.

From an icy blast from the Arctic

and the cooling breeze of a summer day.

To get an idea of what to expect, I have to go underground.

Wind is measured by the force it exerts on an object.

Today that object is going to be me.

This place can produce wind speeds in excess of 200 miles an hour.

It's like a funnel. The wind speed increases as the air gets squeezed.

Up there, where I'll stand, wind is seven times faster than here.

So it's a great place to feel the full force of it!

Wind speed is measured using the Beaufort scale.

This is Force 2 -

about 6 to 10mph.

It feels like a gentle breeze of a summer's day.

But at 25-30mph, things are picking up.

This is Force 6 - a strong breeze, where big trees sway

and you've to fight your umbrellas.

At 40mph - Force 8 - it's getting tough to stand up.

A little more and there'll be damage to your house. Tree branches are breaking.

But once you hit Force 9, things are getting really stormy!

50mph - a good gale.

Trees and power lines down.

Houses damaged.

I'm still standing

but, as you can see, it's taking my full weight. Woo!

WIND TUNNEL ROARS

In a wind tunnel it may look like fun, but, in nature, winds of this speed are deadly.

And we call them hurricanes.

The people of Dade County, Florida, know what it's like to live through a hurricane.

In 1992, Hurricane Andrew changed their lives forever.

A devastation, a tragedy like this, coming into an area, just shakes up people's lives for years to come.

The nightmare began on Friday August 14.

Like all hurricanes, Andrew began life off the coast of Africa

in the warm waters of the Atlantic.

Hot, humid air rose up to create several thunderstorms around an area of low pressure.

The Earth's rotation made the storm rush into the low pressure area in an anti-clockwise direction,

like water down a plughole.

This spun them into one huge system, driven across the ocean by powerful winds.

4,000 miles away in the United States,

the swirling thunderstorms had been spotted.

They'd not yet formed a hurricane,

but were seen as a potential killer and monitored by experts.

One of them, Stanley Goldenberg, had flown through many hurricanes,

but this time it was going to be very different.

I was asked to fly Hurricane Andrew and love to fly.

I said, "No! My wife's expecting..." We didn't dream what would happen.

Andrew continued to build.

Like all tropical storms, it was fuelled by heat.

Warm water vapour within the cloud is attracted to surfaces of minute particles, like salt crystals,

causing the water vapour to condense.

This process - changing from gas to liquid - releases heat.

A storm of Andrew's size results in vast billowing updraughts

which suck in moisture from the sea, creating more rain and heat,

driving the wind speed higher and higher.

By Thursday morning, as the energy within the storm grew, the wind speeds accelerated to over 75mph.

Andrew was now officially a hurricane.

On Friday, the hurricane watchers saw Andrew weaken and turn away from Florida.

We thought it was falling apart. The Miami Herald said, "Andrew weakens and moves out to sea."

By Saturday morning, Andrew was gaining strength as the eye of the hurricane hit the Bahamas

with wind speeds of up to 122mph.

Florida lay just ten hours ahead.

Andrew was now 100 miles across and the outer edges were already lashing the Florida coast.

Having spent years studying hurricanes from his desk,

a bizarre twist of fate meant Stanley, his family and new baby,

were to become victims of Andrew.

'This is our house, calmly waiting for Hurricane Andrew.'

That night, trapped at home, he hoped the hurricane would pass away to the north.

I went through denial. In the midst of it AND dealing with a new baby, I had to deal with a hurricane!

'If you can see it, the beginnings of Andrew...

'This is just one little squall.

'We have much more to go.

'Sunday 23rd of August and we're going to weather it out...

-'Hi, Daniel. Say hi!

-Hi!'

-ROARING

-Oh, boy! Can you hear that?

I don't know if the video will pick it up. It's coming!

People say a tornado sounds like a freight train or plane going by.

This was that kind of sound, but it just seemed to always get louder.

'It IS blowing! I certainly have never seen anything like it before.

'I can feel our ears constantly pop.

'The winds outside, I think, are at least 110mph. Aaron, are you OK?'

A hurricane's highest winds are around the wall of the eye -

the outer edge of the black ring.

At 4.35am on Sunday morning, the deadly eye wall of Andrew

hit Dade County at 175mph,

destroying the radar that produced these images.

People ask me, "Did you hear the roof rip off?"

Something hit the kitchen-living room wall and it fell on us.

Things were pressing down on us. We were in this tiny little space.

The water level was rising.

Things got louder and noisier. We thought we were going to die.

When the roof gave, and we were in the most terrifying situation we could imagine

during the worst part of the storm.

We were pinned under the wall there.

Fell on top of us and pinned us there.

Kids crying. Us crying.

Thanking God that we were all safe.

Hallelujah!

(Hallelujah...)

It shakes me when I see the film. At the start, I think, "These guys don't know what's going to happen."

A few blocks from Stanley's house, an area of prefab houses sat on the leading edge

of the eye of the storm. The lightweight structures didn't stand a chance.

'This, though, is the worst.

'This is a trailer park at about 137th and 152nd.

'There's many trailer parks here.

'Just another typical street here.

'Everything... Total rubble.

'Some people, the worst wind they've experienced

'is a strong thunderstorm -

'50mph gusts where power lines and trees go down.'

The force of Andrew was 15 to 20 times that force.

Hurricane Andrew terrorised the people of Florida for six hours

and, by morning, 23 people had lost their lives.

High above the coast of Florida,

there's a wind that's even faster than a hurricane.

It's one of the fastest on Earth.

It's called a jet stream -

a massive river of wind 125 miles wide

that circles the whole planet

at up to 2-300 miles an hour.

To get an idea of what that feels like, it's back to the wind tunnel.

-Yup.

-OK.

-This is attached to an anchor point in the ceiling...

-Yeah.

-It'll make sure that,

if the wind does take you off your feet, then you'll be OK.

This is actually a record attempt, because no-one has withstood the speed of a jet stream here before.

Lucky me(!)

-We're aiming for the speed of the jet stream?

-We can do it.

-If it's too dangerous, you'll still do it! No, no!

-You're a braver man than me!

The jet stream wind we'll try and reproduce here

was first discovered through a ingenious act of war.

The story begins in Oregon in 1945, during the Second World War.

Some school children found a strange object.

As they played with it, it exploded, killing them all.

Similar objects were also found along the west coast of the USA and Canada.

Closer inspection showed they were Japanese bombs carried by huge paper balloons.

Canadian bomb-disposal expert Bert Day got a close-up look.

This is one quarter of the chandelier that hung below the big paper bag

that held up all the bombs.

It's hard to believe, it's so complicated as hell! But it worked!

This is one of the Japanese paper balloons, identified by the code name "paper".

Blown by the winds, the bombs could land anywhere.

The military worried about the panic that might develop.

To cover it up, we blamed it on the Royal Canadian Air Force.

We said that they had a bomb and it fell out of the plane, you know.

The stupid bastards! We blamed it on them and got away with it.

The mystery was how the balloons were getting from Japan to the USA.

A balloon that size could only travel 4-500 miles

and Japan was over four-and-a-half thousand miles away.

The Japanese had discovered a fast-flowing stream of wind

after flying over the Pacific TO the USA

in HALF the time it took them to get back.

It wasn't until after the war that the nature of the wind was revealed.

The Japanese devised a cheap and effective way to bomb the USA by harnessing their knowledge.

It was a brilliant idea.

Launched from three sites in Japan,

an ingenious system of weights, altimeters and timers

carried the balloons up to 50,000ft, until they entered what we now call the jet stream.

Caught in the flow, they were whisked over the Pacific

and timed to drop onto the USA and Canada.

Down they'd come, all the way down, and whammo!

They'd be in the trees with all the bombs hanging on them.

Japan's discovery of the jet stream

meant America was defenceless against this ingenious attack.

There was nothing we could do. It was quite a design.

Smart! The Japs were sharp, no doubt about that.

Despite the huge distance, over 1,000 balloon bombs DID reach North America

but, in the end, only six people were ever killed.

Today the jet streams are used for much more benign reasons...

if you can ever find one!

For world record balloonists Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard,

finding the jet stream became a matter of life and death.

Starting in Switzerland,

the plan was to be the first balloon to circumnavigate the Earth.

They hoped to do it by flying in the jet streams.

We can't see the jet stream. We don't know where it'll form, so we use meteorologists.

We had two meteorologists working full time,

doing 10,000 calculations every day,

to track where the jet stream was.

There are five jet streams, between six and nine miles up.

They mark the boundaries between the wind cells.

Low pressure air rises and meets high pressure air from the poles.

Where they converge, a spinning tube of air is created.

It's the free ride the jet stream gives that made them desperate to find the right one.

It was just incredible, watching the speed build up.

I thought, "I've no idea who's flying this balloon

"but, please, carry on. You're doing a grand job!"

And that's what the jet stream did!

We'd gone round the world, crossed the Pacific and just had the Atlantic to go.

And this is where it all began to go wrong.

After 14 days, they'd travelled three-quarters of the way around the world

before the jet stream suddenly abandoned them.

And then, suddenly, it just disappeared.

And it's sort of... It's like the fingers on a hand. It fragments.

'We'd to drop down really low and wait for the next jet stream wind to form.'

Pundits said we'd run out of fuel, we'd not make it across the Atlantic. We agreed.

Faced with the threat of ditching in freezing, hostile seas,

five days from the nearest help, the outlook appeared bleak.

It's horribly slow. We're only doing 21 knots,

so we're right out in the middle of nowhere and not going very fast.

Five agonising days passed.

This was no longer a race for a world record.

It was a desperate bid to stay alive...

and then the jet stream reappeared.

But to get back into it meant climbing higher and using up precious fuel.

The balloon was getting lighter. In fact, we'd thrown stuff out over the ocean to try to make it lighter.

We were able to push and push, just to get as high as we possibly could.

When we got to that altitude, we got right into the jet stream wind.

Suddenly we weren't doing 70mph. We were doing 120-130 and building!

We shot across the Atlantic, in the core of this jet stream wind.

We looked at each other and thought, "Fantastic!"

There was just no question about us not making the finish line!

We've done it! Yeah!

From take off to touch down in North Africa, around the world in just 21 days.

MACHINE WHIRRS LOUDLY

'I'm ready for MY record-breaking attempt - the speed of the jet stream.

'The tunnel can do it. The question is, can I?

'No-one has withstood much more than 100mph in here... not yet, anyway!'

Stop!

Enough! Enough!

'Nowhere near the speed of a jet stream, but I'm the first to withstand even this.'

-HE CATCHES HIS BREATH

-'I wouldn't recommend it, though.'

It feels like a massage by 100 sumo wrestlers! Oh, dear.

An avalanche of wind... piercing your body,

lashing your hands, body. One movement of the hands

sent your body all the way over here! Ahh...

In the real world, it's not like this. There's no safety lines, no controlled environments.

It's a nightmare, you know.

This was an average hurricane - terrifying enough - but without all this protection,

I can't imagine what it'd be like. Incomprehensible!

'136 is tough,

'but Chad Urwin has been within 6 inches of a 300mph wind... and survived

'when this tornado went over his head.

'That's double the speed I've just tried.

'Nature's winds are always savagely unpredictable.'

We were watching the news about the tornado

that was coming out of south west.

It came over there and was a mile-and-a-half wide.

You could see the tornado sitting on top of the hill. It sat for a minute, then made a motion to the right.

It picked up a 26,000-square-foot church, spun it around completely,

turned it upside down and slammed it down to the ground like Tinker Toys.

We came over here...

We were pelted by gravel coming down the road at 100mph, something like that.

We came here. My son wavered, like he'd get blown into the pond.

And we ran down this way...

And then we got in here. All of us got in here.

Walked on our knees until we got into the centre.

Then we rode the tornado out while we were sitting in here.

So how does wind spin itself into such a concentrated killer?

The exact mechanism is unclear, but it seems our friend the jet stream plays a part.

Tornadoes form in huge rotating thunderstorms known as super-cells.

These can rise as much as eight miles into the sky and, as they grow upwards,

they encounter jet streams. These fast high-level rivers of wind

suck air out the top, causing MORE air to be sucked in at the bottom.

This creates turbulence in the storm that causes the air in it to roll over itself.

The result is a horizontal spinning vortex of air.

Strong updraughts push the vortex into a tube and force it downwards.

When it touches the Earth, a twister is born.

The consequences can be lethal.

I feel sorry for the other people out here that lost loved ones.

I came out and saw a boy and his mother trying to get into the house.

I said, "Where's your mother at?"

He said, "I was walking with her. The tornado just sucked her out of my hand."

She didn't make it. She died that night.

After the storm, evidence emerged that vehicles - and even people -

had been sucked into the tornado and carried vast distances.

Chad was one of the few survivors to witness it.

A van and a pick-up came here from Oklahoma, 55 miles away.

This guy who's supposed to have been dropped in this pond came from Chickasaw, which is 30 miles away.

This particular tornado is a rare beast - an F5 -

the most powerful on the Fujita tornado scale.

It contained the fastest winds ever recorded - a staggering 318mph.

At these speeds, wind can rip the tarmac from a road.

The force on the ground is the same as the shock wave from a nuclear bomb.

My wife said, "How's the house?" I said, "What house?"

She said, "Don't joke!" I said, "I'm not joking. Our house isn't here.

"Nothing! There's nothing out here."

It breaks your heart every day when you find something that belonged to you.

I walk on the hill and look for things that belonged to me.

Once in a while I get lucky and find something.

The little town of Bridge Creek, south of Oklahoma City, was the worst affected.

In just 15 minutes, the twister devastated the community and in the hours that followed,

people struggled to the school gym, one of the few remaining buildings.

HUBBUB OF VOICES

Their injuries were horrific.

The twister had thrown tons of metal, wood and glass into the air with the power of a machine gun.

The survivors bore all the hallmarks.

Flecks of dirt were driven at such high speeds, they'd been forced deep into the skin.

In an area of less than two square miles, ten of their neighbours had been killed.

The next day, the damage became clear.

The tornado had mown a vast strip 20 miles long through the town and surrounding hills.

In all, 65 tornadoes hit the Oklahoma region that day.

42 people died and nearly 3,500 homes were destroyed

in just 11 hours.

Several people were killed by that tornado.

People like the Darnells who lived up here on the hill.

Kelly Cox, that lost her mother.

Then the Woods. They lived over the hill over here.

Those people always haunt me.

I hope I never have to go through anything like that again. Once is enough.

When a powerful wind hits an object on land,

it unleashes some energy - a house pulverised or forest laid flat.

But when wind hits water, the energy transfer can be awesome.

Wind creates friction on any surface.

But the largest on the planet is the ocean, covering 70 per cent.

Therefore, the friction between wind and water has amazing results!

So, here in Hawaii is the best place to test

the enormous energy generated by the friction between the two.

The folks here are world experts at harnessing it in any way they can.

With just a few metres of nylon and a 20mph breeze,

the power of the wind can be turned into a maximum-strength adrenaline buzz!

Champion kite surfer Marigold Zoll claims she can get me airborne in an afternoon.

It can't be that difficult. It's only a kite, after all!

If you double the wind speed, you get four times the force.

So add a few mph to the wind speed against my kite

and, in theory, there'd be enough power to lift a family car!

However, it seems that's not going to work for me!

-We're using a bigger kite.

-Yup.

-I'm a bit heavy and we need some air!

-That's the reason, isn't it?

-Yes.

A bit of the ballerina about me out there, I thought. Very smooth! Hmm.

-You were definitely on your toes!

-Am I a too smug for a beginner?

We'll see how you do on the board!

Just as wind pushes against my kite,

it also pushes against the surface of the water. The result...is waves.

But getting onto them is not quite as easy as it looks.

That's what tiddly Hawaiian waves can do! Eat you in and spit you out.

Imagine what the whoppers will do!

When you think of the chaotic way waves are born, it's a wonder that there's any order to them at all!

In fact, every ocean has its own unique wave rhythm.

You can tell the size of ocean by the number of times a wave breaks in a single minute.

In Hawaii, you get about seven crashing ashore every 60 seconds.

And over here, 10,500 miles to the east, on the far shore of the Atlantic

on the Irish coast, you get...

..eight waves a minute. But if I go back there 5,000 miles,

over to the much smaller Gulf of Mexico,

you can count many more waves per minute.

9...10...11...

There are 12 per minute.

That's five more than in Hawaii.

That's because the Atlantic and Pacific are far bigger oceans than the Gulf of Mexico.

The bigger the ocean, the more time and space for wind to act upon it.

The longer the wind blows on a wave, the larger it becomes

and more distant from other waves.

So, in bigger oceans you get bigger waves and fewer of them -

7 every minute on the Pacific coast

compared to 12 in the smaller Gulf of Mexico.

Woo!

If there is no wind, there's no wave.

It's the erratic nature of the winds stabbing at the surface that gives birth to the waves.

The further across the sea the wind blows,

the bigger the wave it creates.

Wind and water are in constant contact,

each creating friction against each other.

This friction whips up the ocean, sculpting water into its most beautiful form.

Elsewhere in the world, a powerful wind can turn waves into monsters.

A big storm on one side of an ocean can push rollers thousands of miles

onto beaches on the other side.

But if a massive storm travels across the ocean,

the waves it creates can be deadly.

So what happens when the winds blow up a real tempest at sea?

The answer is a lot closer to home.

Having travelled across the Atlantic to Ireland,

I'm now about to see what happens when the wind and the waves combine

with the power of the jet stream and the intensity of a hurricane. Few people have witnessed it.

Below me is the Fastnet race.

It's where the very best yachtsmen come to pit their wits

against the world's roughest seas.

This is the Fastnet Rock off the southern tip of Ireland.

It's one of most westerly points in Europe

and feels the full force of Atlantic storms.

Some of the really big ones come from the USA,

carried by transatlantic Westerlies.

Given the right conditions, these storms can whip the seas around us

into terrifying walls of water,

which have even reached over the top of the lighthouse.

In the summer of 1979,

just a few miles from where I am standing,

a storm of almost unprecedented ferocity set in,

unlike any other in these waters.

It spelt disaster for the few yachtsmen and women

who were unlucky enough to be caught up in it.

They're not like breaking waves on the beach, which are lovely to watch.

They're like monsters. They rumble and as they charge down the face of the wave, they build.

They are huge and they engulf you, and they did.

But at the heart of that terrible storm, there remains a mystery

that hints at a freak weather phenomenon.

The start couldn't have been in better conditions,

perfect conditions - good visibility, light breeze.

It was the dream start to the race we'd looked forward to.

In 1979, Matt Sheehan was 17 years old

and working as crew on his father's boat during the Fastnet yacht race.

The 600-mile course round the legendary lighthouse is the perfect place

to stretch the world's best to their limits.

But 1979 was different.

A hot summer's day in North America,

a freak weather phenomenon,

and a lighthouse off Ireland's coast

were about to play a part in the closest thing sailors have ever come to hell.

An event like the '79 Fastnet leaves you in no doubt

as to how powerful the weather can be.

A small change is enough to turn what you think is a situation that is under control,

that you may be apprehensive about,

but you're under control, into complete chaos.

On August the 10th, 4,000 miles away to the west,

Low Y, as the storm would come to be known,

was beginning to form in the skies of the USA's Northern Great Plains.

Hot summer air mixed with cold air from the north.

These storms are normally harmless and burn themselves out in a day or so.

At the same time, back on this side of the Atlantic,

Fastnet competitors were worried that there wouldn't be ENOUGH wind.

Far above the storm in America,

the jet stream swung slightly south

and began to blow over the top of the storm, accelerating wind speeds.

The whole system was then pushed out east,

gaining strength and speed with every hour.

News that Low Y was on the way reached the yachts later that night.

We were pretty well organised, battened down and ready to face it.

Low Y was expected to head straight for France, well away from Fastnet,

but at the last minute, it turned and headed north towards the Rock.

On the evening of August 13th,

the storm slammed into the race.

What happened then, as things developed,

was that it did get very uncomfortable.

The chaotic fury of the storm

caused rapid changes in wind direction,

which created towering waves that battered the boats from all sides,

making them almost uncontrollable.

Matt and the other experienced sailors were shocked and confused.

The crests of waves would break way above you and, in the darkness,

you'd hear rumbling. You'd think, "Where on Earth is it coming from?"

Every now and then, to your horror,

you'd see it coming down towards the boat. That was one of the most frightening things about the ordeal -

not knowing where these waves were coming from.

At the heart of the storm, a highly unusual event was taking place.

When all the weather records were analysed,

they revealed the presence of a unique phenomenon -

a freak event where a tongue of cold, dry air from high in the stratosphere, a "surface jet",

forced itself down into the heart of the storm.

The effect was like turbo-charging.

It split a normal storm into several systems,

each with strength of a hurricane.

By the early hours of the next morning, mayday calls were jamming the emergency radio frequency.

Reports were coming in of 50-foot waves like blocks of flats and 70mph winds.

The one that caused the biggest problem came rumbling down and hit us,

overturned us, but this time the boat didn't come upright.

This time it remained upside down.

As I was held down in the water, I just felt cross and disappointed.

Disappointed because there were so many other things I wanted to do.

While Matt was underwater fighting for his life,

his father David had also been swept overboard.

I stood up and saw the very thing I least wanted to see.

I don't know why, I knew straight away, but it was my father

lying face down in the water, just drifting away.

And that was the last I ever saw of him.

As we flew back, looking out of the window,

it was just a scene of chaos.

Some people were firing off distress flares,

desperate to be seen and picked up.

That was when it really struck me

how serious...the whole scene... had been.

Tragically, the storm they called Low Y was responsible for 15 deaths in the Fastnet race.

Some were washed overboard, others died trapped inside their vessels,

but many more died in life rafts that proved inadequate for such awful conditions.

Friends of mine who were involved in the storm at that time,

and people who I've met since then,

have sailed round the world.

All of them say they had never seen anything like the conditions they saw

in this small area in the Irish sea.

This was wind and waves at their wildest.

They defeated the best sailors in the world.

But there is a wind that creates the biggest waves in the solar system.

It's the fastest wind of them all.

And up here on one of Hawaii's highest mountains

is the place to see it.

But at a speed of 4 million miles per hour, you need some specialist kit,

because this wind comes from space. It's called the solar wind,

and when it arrives down here,

it creates the most spectacular show on Earth.

93 million miles away, the sun erupts,

spewing a barrage of charged particles out into space.

A solar wind travels at up to 4 million miles an hour,

but because there are so few particles in it,

it wouldn't even ruffle your hair.

In fact, as I speak, billions of charged particles are passing right through us all

and by now, they are already way out in space.

Although we can't see or feel the solar wind,

we can see its presence in one of nature's most fantastic displays of light,

65 miles above our heads.

The aurora - the northern and southern lights.

What you are looking at is billions of electrons -

charged particles in the solar wind

that hit the atmosphere and excite the gases within it,

creating the ultimate space rainbow.

As the solar wind washes over the Earth's magnetic field,

the charged particles within are drawn down over the polar regions.

When they hit the atmosphere, the aurora is created.

It's the same mechanism

that's making the picture you are watching right now.

The earth's magnetic force guides the particles

in the same way that your TV tube guides these images onto the screen.

But does the solar wind affect our weather?

Yes, but no-one knows exactly how.

It certainly seems to affect the ferocity of polar storms.

Some believe that particles from the sun crash into the troposphere,

creating more clouds and fuelling more storms.

While scientists cannot agree on exactly how solar winds do this,

they realise that the forces that drive our weather

do not stop at the boundary between Earth and space.

Back down on Earth, this frozen landscape marks the end of my journey.

The winds I have followed from the equator

have taken about 14 days to enter the last of the big wind cells.

It's been quite a ride.

Here, in the frozen north,

the wind's journey to the poles finally comes to an end.

In just two weeks,

our journey, which began in the hot stillness of the doldrums

has brought us everything from storms at sea

to the terrifying power of a hurricane.

After carrying all this violence, it comes to rest here,

sinking gently back towards Earth.

Now all this cold air begins to slip south,

and the cycle starts all over again.

This enormous cycle of the winds

has brought every kind of weather to every corner of the Earth.

As it churns through the atmosphere,

it shapes our world and changes our lives.

In the next programme, I am going to take a ride with water,

the fuel of the weather.

Driven by the winds, water can bring life and death.

I'll be following water's journey

from the oceans to the clouds, from a storm to a flood,

to experience the awesome power it can unleash.

Subtitles by Susan Mason and Judith Simpson BBC Broadcast 2002

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