Wild Weather part 2

The heat of the sun drives our weather,
but water creates
its many different faces.
I'm Donal MacIntyre.
I'm about to follow water's journey
around the planet
from the oceans to the clouds,
from a storm to a flood,
because I want to experience
the awesome power it can unleash.
I'll meet people
who've been at the mercy
of some of the wettest,
wildest weather on Earth.
This is..."Wild Weather"!
We live on a water planet.
70 per cent of the surface
is water.
Every living thing, including us,
is made of it.
Right now there are twelve
thousand billion tonnes of it,
literally hanging above our heads.
And it's this that fuels
the world's weather.
Divide it by the amount
of people who live on the planet -
this is how much each
single one of us would have.
A cube of water measuring
46 metres high, wide and deep.
The same water we bathe in,
we drink or flush away.
It's the same water that rains on us,
that forms the hurricanes
and the monsoons.
It's the same water that's been
here since Earth was formed.
All things being equal, this would
be your share of the weather.
This is the same water that fell
as rain before life itself began.
By now it has probably circled
the planet over 8,000,000 times.
I'll follow the cycle your bit
of water takes around the world.
Along the way,
we'll see how it transforms itself
into every kind of weather
on the planet.
I'm going to start my journey
with water
in the wettest place
in Western Europe - Bergen,
city of rain
on Norway's western coast.
It rains here
two out of every three days.
What's the one thing you need
in a city like this?
Umbrellas, lots of them.
We have umbrellas for little rain,
a lot of rain and storms.
For every occasion?
Yes.
This city is so proud of its rain
they can it and sell it to tourists
because they've lots of it.
To give you an idea.
If I stood here every day
and night for the next 16 years,
I couldn't capture
the volume of water
that falls on this city
in a single year.
400,000 Olympic-size
swimming pools of water
drench this place annually.
Crashing down on the roof
of the average family house every month
is a staggering 18 tonnes of rain,
that's 225 tonnes a year.
This place is seriously wet.
Devious tactics have to be employed
by weather forecasters
to keep the people happy.
Enter the blonde.
This is TV2,
Bergen's local TV station.
Benedikte Rasmussen
has the unenviable job
of presenting the weather.
It's not that difficult.
When the meteorologist says
something long and difficult,
it's probably just going to rain.
The longest period of rain
was in 1990.
I know because I've checked.
It rained from the 3rd of January
to the 26th of March that year.
That's about 83 days.
I think I was quite fed up
of rain after those days.
(SPEAKING NORWEGIAN)
Prediction is a fine art.
Benedikte, what's happening here?
We're seeing how the weather
will be in the days ahead.
How's it looking for Bergen?
I'm not sure, I think
a little rain but not too bad.
How are these maps created?
Erm... I don't know!
Benedikte knows only slightly more
about meteorology than I do,
but the ratings show that her
glowing smile and confident presentation
keeps the audience happy
and willing to receive
the somewhat familiar
weather forecasts.
So why is this place so wet?
Daily, warm moist air
flows in from the Atlantic,
hits the surrounding coastal
mountains and is forced up.
As it rises, it cools,
and the result is rain, tonnes of it.
Right this second,
18 million tonnes worth of rain
are falling somewhere on the planet.
If all this rain from
the rooftops is going to join it,
there is only one way it can go,
into the rivers.
Yesterday, what's cascading around me now
was a rain shower in Bergen.
Before that, it could have been
a monsoon rain cloud in India
or a cup of tea from the Ritz!
Today it's a river in Norway.
By tomorrow,
it will have joined the North Sea.
After that, who knows where
or what it will next become.
The water on our planet connects
us all in truly remarkable ways.
All this water racing
out into the North Sea
is about to join a vast
weather-making ocean current.
I'll follow it to see some of the wettest,
wildest weather on Earth.
In order to see
where this current starts,
I have to travel north of Bergen.
There are many ocean currents
that move water around our planet,
but there's one, a master current
out in the North Atlantic,
that's the drive belt
of our weather systems.
It's called the Thermohaline Conveyor.
Every ocean in the world
is connected by it.
It's a 70,000-mile round trip
that takes about 1,000 years to complete.
In that time, the water could have
been part of every kind of weather
in Scotland or on the Serengeti.
It takes a phenomenal
amount of energy
to drive this massive engine,
the Thermohaline Conveyor.
What turns it on, what kick starts it?
To see for myself how it works,
I have to get under the ice.
The secret lies
in when this ocean turns to ice.
At minus two degree Celsius,
sea water begins to freeze.
But this ice
is made of fresh water,
as salt doesn't freeze
and is locked out in the process.
This water is very salty,
which makes it heavier, so it sinks.
As these billions of tonnes
of cold, salty water fall,
they begin to flow south.
This sucks the warmer tropical waters
up north to replace them.
This action drives
a permanent ocean cycle.
From here, the route it takes
is truly global.
As the cold waters plunge
to the depths of the ocean,
they flow along the bottom
and then around the Horn of Africa.
After about 500 years,
it begins to warm up.
The Conveyor's first stop
is in the Indian Ocean,
and, much later, in the Pacific Ocean,
where the whole system then curves around
and the cycle repeats itself.
It's hard to imagine that the next time
anyone sees the water I'm swimming in
will be when it rises as a warm current
and laps a beach in India.
After a 6,000-mile journey
within the Conveyor,
the water that fell as rain
in Bergen over 500 years ago
is about to become part
of the biggest rainstorm on the planet.
India hasn't seen
a drop of rain for months.
Life is almost unbearable.
Well, almost!
But the monsoon is on its way.
Every summer around June 6th,
regular as clockwork, these clouds
sweep in from the Indian Ocean
bringing life and death
in their wake.
How it works is remarkably simple.
For most of the year,
the prevailing winds come from the north.
Then, as summer heats
up the country,
massive columns of hot air
begin to rise
and, as they do, they suck in
cooler moist air from the sea.
When these moist clouds
break over land,
you get the fury
of the monsoon downpour.
That cloud there
is the beginning of the monsoon.
To see what's going on up there,
I'm going to take a closer look.
I'm about to do something never
done before in the monsoon.
I'm going to go up and experience
the hot, humid monsoon winds.
To do that, I have to jump off this.
(SHOUTING INSTRUCTIONS)
Flying with the birds has to be
the most amazing and scariest way
of seeing
the advance of the monsoon.
On a day like this,
75 billion tonnes worth of rain clouds
will sweep across this coast.
A third will fall as rain.
It's staggeringly hard to imagine
that amount of rain falling anywhere.
Some clouds are ten miles thick
and densely packed with water.
You don't want to be here
when that lot breaks,
so for a little protection,
a little warning,
you have to know what turns
that water into raindrops.
So you have to look right
into the heart of a cloud -
and right now that one there
looks promising.
So how does a cloud produce a raindrop?
Up close, a cloud is just
a swirling mass of water vapour.
Floating in it are comparatively
huge particles of dust and pollen.
The vapour
is attracted to the surface.
They collide with each other,
getting bigger and heavier.
It takes a million of these droplets
to make a raindrop only 2mm wide.
Gravity does the rest.
Monsoon downpours are epic.
In a few seconds, they can bring
inches of water crashing to the ground.
For this brief period in the year,
the monsoon changes everybody's life.
A welcome relief from the tensions
of the scorching heat.
When the rains arrive,
India lets its hair down
and goes mad for football.
The rain softens the pitches,
making them easy to play on.
I can't believe I'm 6,000 miles
away from home
and I'm still playing in mud.
I doubt the monsoon is doing
anything for my game
but it's doing wonders
for my body.
All this rain can actually
make you feel good.
As water falls through the air -
be it heavy rain, a waterfall
or even a shower -
tiny particles in the air called ions
become negatively charged.
This makes them sticky,
which cleans the air
by literally dragging dirt
and dust particles to the ground,
leaving it fresh and clear.
The cleaner the air, the quicker
oxygen is delivered around the body,
and it's this
that makes us feel good.
Which is why the shower is where
most of us have our best thoughts.
All this clean air has another effect
on the local population.
To find out what,
I went to see my friend Antonio.
Antonio, it's raining heavily,
I love the sound of this rain.
Yes, it is beautiful.
When it rains it's like music.
When it rains, especially very heavily,
you love to stay at home,
and a lot of people conceive
at this time as I see it.
So the rain brings babies too?
Maybe.
Lots of water babies.
Nine months after the monsoon,
the birth rate leaps.
It's an intense period,
because in a few months' time
those monsoon breezes
rushing in from the sea
will reverse themselves, leaving
just the merciless heat of the sun.
India only manages to hold on
to ten per cent of all that rain.
The rest leaves the country
by the thousands of rivers and streams
that break its shores.
Every second, billions
of gallons pour into the oceans
to rejoin the great
weather-maker,
the Thermohaline Conveyor.
The cycle continues, this time
back towards the Atlantic.
The warmer surface current takes
only 50 years to get there.
This is the same water that fell
as rain in the last days of the Raj.
It's about to become clouds in the USA,
but this time they won't bring any rain.
This is Texas, land of big skies.
Looking at the crops
you'd think, big rain.
In fact, it doesn't rain nearly enough.
The clouds simply don't do
what they're supposed to.
In the clouds above the USA and Europe,
all raindrops start life as ice crystals.
As they fall, they melt.
But here it is so hot and so dry
the rain evaporates
before it hits the ground.
The average cloud
weighs about 25 tonnes
and contains about seven
fire trucks worth of water.
Not all of them will actually rain.
Some will evaporate and many
last only a few minutes.
Even when there's plenty
of water in a cloud,
there's often a lack of the vital
ingredient to make a raindrop -
a little something
for the moisture to gather round.
With one corn field requiring
4,000 gallons of water each day
and a single cloud containing
just enough for one acre,
the question is how do you
tease the rain from the clouds?
Science and big business
claim to have solved the problem...
and they've found the answer
in a freezer.
In the 1940s, scientists
were trying to replicate
the temperatures
found at high altitude.
At minus 20 degrees Celsius,
the conditions weren't cold enough.
To make it colder,
they brought in blocks of dry ice.
At minus 78 degrees Celsius,
the temperature was similar
to those high up in the clouds.
It was then scientists
made a fascinating discovery.
Whilst moving the dry ice
into the freezer,
they noticed the air around them
became so cold
that the warm water vapour
in their breath
instantly froze into tiny ice crystals.
These crystals are exactly the same
as the ones that form naturally
high up in the clouds.
(EXPELS AIR)
They are the frozen seeds
of a natural raindrop.
They're sparkling and shining.
It's amazing!
(WORDS ECHO)
This chance discovery
led the scientists to wonder
if they put man-made crystals,
imitating the ice, into the cloud,
would the cloud produce more rain?
To see if it works,
I went to meet the experts.
In Texas alone,
they spend millions of dollars a year
trying to make it rain.
This is the Hondo airbase,
southern Texas.
It's home to a small team
from Weather Modification Inc.,
the biggest company
in the rain business.
They've been hired
by the local water authority
to boost the rapidly
dwindling water supplies.
If demand from towns and farms
continues at its current pace,
some people predict the water
will run out in 50 years' time.
Jeremy Price has been flying
this beat for four years.
We can keep a storm going
about 25 per cent longer,
about five minutes - the actual
storm lasts about 20 minutes.
What difference
would that make to a farmer?
Dramatic. We increase the annual
rainfall by a couple of inches.
It doesn't seem a lot,
but consider the millions of acres.
It adds billions and billions
of gallons of water.
(RADIO TRANSMITTING DIRECTIONS)
(PILOT CONFIRMS)
We don't do magic.
There's a lot of science behind it.
We're not rain creators,
bringing rain out of nowhere.
We seed the rain that's there
and make it a little bit more.
Here in Texas, in the afternoon,
we get heavy thunderstorms,
and we'll go up and fight
through the main updraught,
as that's where our
chemicaliser is most effective.
We'll look for an inflow,
an updraught sucking up air
and feeding itself moisture.
We allow our burners
to produce dust
in the air that's being sucked
into the thunder cloud.
This seeds and creates the rain.
The burners release
a chemical into the air
which is sucked up by the storm.
I'll reach across
and turn on the left burner...
and the burner's lit.
The process
is known as "cloud seeding",
and the seeds are tiny particles
of silver iodide
that mimic the shape
of the ice crystals.
When these particles
are sprayed up into a cloud,
water vapour freezes onto them.
They grow in size
until they become snowflakes.
As they start to fall back down,
they melt into rain.
Even if it rains after
the clouds have been seeded,
detractors ask if it
wouldn't have rained anyway.
The rainmakers are shrewd
enough not to claim
that their techniques work
beyond a shadow of a doubt.
They provide a service
that many satisfied customers
are happy to pay
a fistful of dollars for.
Yet many scientists insist
that the evidence for rain enhancement
doesn't stack up.
The debate goes on.
But faced with more water shortages,
people feel something's being done,
whether it works or not.
It's ironic that,
trapped in the blue skies above,
is all the water
they would ever need.
Just south of here,
the people of the Caribbean
witnessed the deadly power of one
of the earth's biggest rain machines.
This one had a name,
Hurricane Mitch.
Mitch was born on the 21st of October
in the warm waters near the equator.
The sun heats the surface of the sea,
evaporating one trillion tonnes
of water into the air each day.
Once in the air, where does it all go?
At about 2,000 feet up,
the water vapour cools
and condenses back
into tiny water droplets.
This is the dew point,
it's where all clouds are born.
Each cloud is made of billions
and billions of water droplets.
Carried aloft by the rising warm air,
they billow upwards.
If the heat from the sea below
is strong enough,
they grow into massive tropical storms.
The 22nd of October 1998
began as a normal day.
At the National Hurricane Centre
in Miami,
it was a day they'd never forget.
Out in the Caribbean, a major
storm system was building.
It developed quite fast
after it became a tropical storm.
For several days, we monitored
this cluster of thunderstorms
and we knew it would be a threat
somewhere in the Caribbean.
In the capital city of Honduras,
Tegucigalpa,
people were oblivious
to the gathering storm out to sea.
It was hurricane season
and they were used to it.
(ELECTRIC CRACKLING)
As it spun towards Honduras,
sucking up vast amounts of water,
the wind speed picked up.
At 75 mph,
Mitch officially became a hurricane.
It was picking up two billion tonnes
of water vapour daily,
which inevitably had to fall somewhere.
On 27th October, it was
business as usual in the capital.
We were in direct contact
with the forecast offices
in Honduras, Nicaragua,
Belize and Central America.
The hurricane was so large,
we knew it was going to affect
with rain and strong winds
all the north coast of Honduras,
so warnings were out
20 hours in advance.
The next day, Hondurans
began to prepare for the worst.
Out at sea, the warm waters
of the Caribbean
fuel the cycle of evaporation and rain.
By now Mitch had been rated
a category five hurricane,
the most lethal
on the potential damage scale.
In Tegucigalpa, Pedro Funez
and thousands like him
were on their way to work.
By the evening of 29th October,
Mitch had reached the north coast.
The destructive power is in
the very, very heavy rains,
as circulation interacts with
a very mountainous land mass -
here Honduras,
and Nicaragua down here.
It draws in moisture
from the Pacific Ocean
and the Caribbean Sea,
from both sides.
The circulation is so large,
it's very slow to spin down.
Mitch was so big that while
its centre covered the land,
its spinning edges sucked up
vast amounts of water vapour
from the Pacific and Caribbean.
It then poured it straight
back down again onto the land.
The real disaster is yet
to come in terms of mudslides
and the very great
catastrophes that occur
as a result of several
feet of water being deposited
over the mountainous terrain.
The water racing down
from the mountains
was funnelled into the valleys
at terrifying speeds,
wiping out anything in its path.
Residents watched in horror
as friends were swept away,
along with whole neighbourhoods.
(CRIES OF PANIC AND DISTRESS)
In the capital, Tegucigalpa,
mudslides washed whole
shantytowns into the river.
One of those houses
belonged to Pedro Funez.
This is all that's left.
(TRANSLATION)
"You could hear people crying."
People began to scream.
It all happened so quickly.
However much you wanted
to take some kind of action,
it was very difficult.
We were almost
on the edge of the cliff.
I think they died quickly.
When the cliff collapsed,
Pedro lost his entire family.
By the 31st of October,
Mitch had disintegrated
and the remnants moved out
into the Gulf of Mexico.
The hurricane is both
a miracle of nature and a monster.
When the meteorologist
looks at it from afar,
he admires it as a thing of beauty.
Many people, even non meteorologists,
would say it's spectacular.
But the more beautiful it looks,
the more potentially destructive
it's going to be.
From the rubble, Pedro
was only able to find one body,
that of his younger son, Javier.
On a quiet hill above the city,
survivors pay their last respects.
(CRIES OUT IN DIALECT)
Mitch was the most lethal storm
in modern history.
Over 7,000 people killed,
8,000 missing and over 12,000 injured.
This death toll ranks with
the deadliest hurricanes of all time.
This was certainly
a very catastrophic event
and one we hope will not be repeated.
An entire country
had very nearly been wiped out
by one of the most powerful
hurricanes the world has ever seen.
When it was over,
billions of gallons of water
drained away into the Gulf of Mexico.
Having brought destruction
to Central America,
this same water
is about to become a key source
of the weather in Britain and Europe.
This coconut could be rolling
onto a beach in Cornwall.
To understand, we have to join the most famous
part of the Thermohaline Conveyor.
Drawn out of the warm waters
of the Gulf of Mexico
by the Thermohaline Conveyor,
the Gulf Stream runs
practically the entire length
of the North American coastline
before reaching out east
across the Atlantic towards the UK.
It's 10 degrees Celsius warmer
than the sea around it,
so it heats the air above it.
All that moist warm air
is then picked up and carried
with the westerly winds to Europe.
Incredibly, this massive river
of warm water gives Britain and Ireland
the wet and mild climate
we all enjoy - so much!
We've known for centuries
that the Gulf Stream exists,
because every day the evidence
is washed up on beaches like this.
Nick and Jane Darke
are professional beachcombers
and regular visitors to Cornwall.
After each storm, you'll find them
searching along the high tide mark.
Hello.
Hi.
These are seeds we've found.
Where's this from?
From central South America.
From one of the rainforests,
then down the Amazon into the sea.
The Gulf Stream even brought them
a little piece of Honduras.
Six months after Mitch, an enormous
number of seeds washed in,
particularly on this beach -
between 400-500 different species
all from central South America
on the Gulf Stream.
Everybody's at it.
We get lots of tags
from Newfoundland, Canada.
This is from Newfoundland
and took 14 months to cross.
You tracked this tag?
Yes, it gives the year, '99,
Lobster, Newfoundland
and the serial number.
From the serial number
we can trace the fisherman.
Some tags have telephone
numbers so I phone them up
and tell them that their gear
has come from their
side of the Atlantic into ours.
They are all always,
absolutely amazed.
What the rest of us want to know
is what weather
the Gulf Stream will bring?
It's very cold all day Sunday.
It will be pretty wet
across southern areas...
... but northern parts will be
dry, bright, with spells of sun.
For the Met Office based at the BBC,
forecasting the weather -
and of course the rain - is not easy.
The Gulf Stream is not
the only influence at work.
We get reports
from some ships and buoys.
We've placed weather buoys
out in the Atlantic.
Helen Willetts,
an experienced forecaster,
explains the other forces
that make our weather so wet.
The British Isles, being
in the middle of the Atlantic,
surrounded by water, it's affected
by lots of different air masses that attack it.
Air's coming in from the poles,
so that's a cold direction,
and tropical continental air
from the warm continent
in the summer, warm, dry weather.
We get our main weather on
this tropical maritime air mass,
which is a warm source of air
coming over the Atlantic.
No land in between,
lots of moisture, thus a lot of rain.
Complicated! So how often
do they get the forecast right?
Forecasters aren't always
famous for getting it right.
There's a bit of prejudice.
People remember if we get it wrong
and don't praise us
when we're right.
We get it right six days
out of seven, about 85 per cent.
There's always that rare moment
when they get it badly wrong.
October 1987 was one of those nights.
Earlier, a woman rang to say
there was a hurricane on the way.
Don't worry, there isn't.
Later that night, hurricane-speed
winds gusting at over 90 mph
struck the south of England,
causing serious damage.
Even British skies can produce
some world-class weather.
And occasionally
some world-class weirdness,
as Derek and Adrienne
Haythornewhite found out
one night at home in Accrington.
It was just a normal night,
it was fine.
It was a nice starry night
with no wind, no rain.
Then I heard
this thudding sound
like someone was shovelling
up in the garden.
Like that.
Then I went
and opened the back door,
and to my amazement
I saw these giant balls
coming from the skies,
really fast.
Couldn't tell what they were,
too big for hailstones.
I told him it's raining apples
or something funny's going on.
They WERE apples, hundreds of them!
We started to see the garden
littered - littered.
Over ankle deep in apples,
all sorts of apples.
Not just one type, it rained
Bramleys, Coxes, Granny Smiths,
Russets, all sorts,
all kinds of different apples.
The only plausible theory
about the Accrington apples
is that they were sucked up
into the atmosphere
by the spiralling winds of a tornado.
In the UK,
twisters are surprisingly frequent.
We get about the same as the USA,
but ours are small
and rarely do any damage.
The increasing amount
of wild, wet weather we get
is bringing terrible devastation
to Britain.
The real danger is not the amount,
but the speed it moves.
This is the Thurcross Dam
on the Yorkshire Moors,
the perfect place to demonstrate
that water only a few feet deep
can knock you off your feet.
The force of water is always a shock,
as this child and his rescuers found out.
What it needs is speed.
Beautiful, isn't it?
Millions of tonnes of water.
Power waiting to be unleashed.
And they're going to dump it all on me!
I wondered why there were four
divers here, two stunt co-ordinators,
safety men, wires and pulleys,
and then I saw that.
We've 14 tonnes of water
escaping every second.
It's the force of a couple
of cars and it will push you over.
Water can turn from nothing
to that in a very few minutes.
Trying to fight it is impossible
even a metre deep.
Once it gets above your knees,
you're finished.
All water needs is speed and volume
to have the strength of an explosion.
We're going to prove how powerful
shallow water can be on the move.
It only takes an hour of heavy rain
to produce a flash flood.
It is this that can wipe out
towns and entire cities.
Good luck, hope you like it.
Thanks.
It's just started.
Our very own little flash flood.
It looks scary up there, really scary.
It's rising an inch
every ten seconds now.
It's really, really hard
just to stand still.
I'll try and hold the weight
a couple of seconds longer.
I think it's... a lost cause.
It's still only...
It's only about three or four
feet off the bottom,
and already our very own flash flood
has swept me off my feet.
There is not a chance
that I can stand here,
let alone swim against it.
It's freezing cold!
And there's a constant...
I can't talk!
It was so cold, all feeling
had gone from my hands and feet.
I was amazed how strong the force
of three feet of water was.
If this had been real,
I'd have had no chance.
The force of water in a river
can be lethal,
but magnify that a thousand times
and apply it to the ocean...
and the results can be disastrous,
as the residents of Hunstanton
on the Norfolk coast
learned to their cost.
On 31st January 1953, a severe storm
moved in off the ocean
and lashed the northern coast
of Britain.
It swept round the northern tip
of Britain and headed south.
The icy gale force winds grew stronger
as they were funnelled
into the North Sea.
The sheer force of the wind
piled the waters up in front of it,
causing it to surge like a bow wave.
Waves of over 12 feet crashed
through the sea defences
and ploughed inland,
smashing everything in its path.
This storm would be a killer,
but it would produce a hero.
U.S. Airman Reis Leeming
was called in to help.
We arrived on the scene at night
and we didn't know the area.
As I looked at the first street...
They said people were "down the houses" -
you couldn't see the houses.
You couldn't see... all you
could see was this water.
It was like being
in the middle of the ocean.
There was water everywhere.
Winds were gusting at over 80 mph,
as Reis struggled through
the icy water dragging a raft.
I took the raft and went
through the gate that was here
and carried it all the way
back to the house.
I could hear the people
but couldn't see them.
These people were on the roof
and somehow I got them -
and I just don't know how -
we got them down and into the boat.
I walked up to this house,
and the doorway was open,
and I took one
or two steps inside
and felt something on my leg
and it was the leg of a man.
It was a husband and wife,
I found out the next day,
an elderly couple,
and they had drowned almost
immediately the sea wall was breached.
Sure looks different now.
At the town hall, nurse Dot Smith
was waiting in vain for survivors.
The first woman they brought in,
I thought, "If she's dead,
the others are."
Sure enough they were drowned.
Two children were brought in next
and I put them all together
on trestles close to each other,
then the father was brought in.
By the time I got to this area
to get these people off,
they had certainly been
on the roof of those houses
since four or five o'clock
in the afternoon,
and this was like 11.30 at night.
With wind blowing 120 mph,
and they were soaking wet,
and the rain
and the freezing water,
it would be amazing to me
if all the 27 - 30 people
that I got out all survive.
After four hours in freezing conditions,
the cold finally took its toll.
I was aware late in the evening
that I was freezing,
I couldn't move my legs.
I remember thinking,
"Oh, boy, you're in big trouble!"
I had to hang on to the raft
because there were people in it,
and that's the last I remember.
I said to the ambulance men,
"How long's he been like this?"
They'd just fished him
out of the water
as his wet suit had got torn.
I asked for scissors as we had
to cut the legs off the wet suit.
Somebody said, "His legs
will have to come off"
and... that was really frightening.
I thought,
"Oh, boy, this is bad news!"
Despite his injuries,
Reis had rescued 27 people.
A week later, when news
of his heroic act had spread,
he was in front of the newsreel
cameras re-enacting it.
In the days that followed,
60 bodies were recovered.
Thousands of survivors
now found themselves homeless.
I thought about these people.
I got a letter from a woman
and she said,
You rescued me
and my two sons that night
and we've been trying
to find you for 40 years.
You'll be interested to know
that the two boys...
The two boys,
one graduated from Cambridge
and is a professor there now
and the other graduated from M.I. T.
And is a professor
of mathematics at M.I. T.
That was neat, you know.
I never did see Reis again.
And I never heard from him
from America.
Almost a lifetime later, Dot and Reis
are reunited on the seafront.
Hi there, young lady.
Oh, my goodness.
How are you?
Oh, Reis.
Oh... a beer belly.
Exactly.
(DOT) How long is it?
'53, when you were 19?
A slim little boy.
A slim little skinny kid.
I know how skinny, I took
all your clothes off.
Yes, I know and you cut
my pant legs.
And you said,
"His legs have to come off."
I didn't.
I thought... OK.
I said, "These legs
have got to come off."
The legs of the wet suit.
Right. Exactly.
For fifty years
I've lived with that fear.
I've woken in the night
and remembered coming to
and hearing someone say
my legs had to come off.
(CONTINUE CHATTING)
The memory
still haunts the survivors,
as does their shock at the awesome
power of the weather that night.
Fuelled by water in its many forms,
the weather can bring life and death.
Hurricane Mitch
washed away an entire country...
whilst the Indian monsoon
brought the land to life.
The constant cycle of water
that flows around and through us
fuels the weather
that dictates our lives.
Back where we started
our journey with water,
people here have developed
a lifestyle that's almost waterproof.
Bergen - city of rain.
At the TV weather station,
Benedikte's still smiling
through the forecasts.
In the town's square, these kids
are at the annual rain festival.
The love of a good shower
is instilled at an early age.
Life would be impossible if rain
stopped play, so they celebrate it.
(SINGING IN NORWEGIAN)
Today, something's not right -
it's not raining.
Such is their thirst for the stuff
the local fire brigade
have to be pressed into service.
We have a saying in Norway,
"There's no thing like bad weather,
only bad clothing."
So on a wet day my four-year-old
will have a great time.
It doesn't matter the weather,
they are used to it.
(CHEERING)
The key to life in a wet world
is to learn to live with it,
to love it.
Without water's endless cycle
around the planet,
there would be no life at all -
no weather, no sunny days,
no playing in the rain.
In the next programme,
I'll take a journey with cold,
from the Arctic
to the heart of a snowflake.
I'm going to be buried alive,
frozen solid
and plunged into the lethal
white heart of winter,
to understand why cold
is the weather's biggest killer.
Yet without it we wouldn't exist.