How Does Weather Actually Work? | Richard Hammond's Wild Weather Compilation | Earth Stories

The video introduces wind as a powerful, invisible force driving extreme weather. Richard Hammond embarks on a journey to understand how wind creates extreme weather, its capabilities, and its speed, including attempts to measure tornado speeds and create fire whirlwinds.

Richard visits Mount Washington in New Hampshire, USA, known as the place with the 'worst weather in the world' due to its record-breaking wind speeds. He experiences 65-85 mph gusts firsthand and explains why this mountain is uniquely windy, attributing it to its height and the 'squeezing' effect on air currents between the mountain and the troposphere.

The video explains that wind is air rushing from one place to another, speeding up in narrow gaps and slowing down around obstacles. Richard shares a simple trick for predicting weather based on cloud movement relative to wind direction, highlighting its general effectiveness despite weather's complexity.

Richard observes ice streamers at Mount Washington and explains how they grow against the wind. He then uses biodegradable confetti to visualize swirling wind patterns, demonstrating that even at high speeds, wind doesn't move in perfectly straight lines, often forming vortices.

The video delves into vortices, which are key to extreme weather like dust devils, waterspouts, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Richard attempts to create a fire whirlwind in Western Australia with the help of Japanese scientists, demonstrating how heat can create winds and how asymmetrical fire arrangements can trigger spinning vortices.

Richard explains that a tornado's destructive power comes from its rotational speed, not its forward movement. He consults with Dr. Josh Wurman of the Center for Severe Weather Research about the challenge of measuring wind speeds close to the ground, where the strongest and most damaging forces occur.

Richard visits the WindEEE Dome in London, Ontario, a hexagonal wind tunnel capable of simulating tornadoes. He participates in experiments to measure tornado-like wind velocities using foam squares, demonstrating the difficulty of getting objects to stay within the vortex and the importance of such simulations for understanding real tornadoes.

Richard joins meteorologist Reed Timmer and his armored vehicle, Dominator 3, designed to intercept tornadoes. They discuss the challenges and dangers of deploying a data-recording probe directly into a tornado to measure its critical rotational speed near the ground, a feat never before achieved.

Reed Timmer and his team successfully deploy a probe into the base of a real tornado, an unprecedented achievement. Although the probe is damaged, the mission marks a significant step forward in understanding tornado dynamics and gathering crucial data for improving safety and building design.

The video shifts focus to water, the second core ingredient of weather. It highlights water's ability to transform and create diverse phenomena, from the fastest to the slowest, softest, and hardest weather on Earth. Richard aims to capture a cloud, weigh it, understand hailstone damage, and experience an avalanche.

Richard attempts to measure a cloud's weight by flying a 'sky sponge' into it. He discovers that even a small cloud can weigh tons, and explains that clouds float because their water droplets are incredibly small. The experiment demonstrates that clouds are constantly falling slowly, but usually evaporate before reaching the ground.

Richard explores the process of rain formation in the wettest part of England. He explains coalescence, where tiny cloud droplets grow by attracting others until they become heavy enough to fall as rain. He also differentiates between rain and drizzle based on whether drops create splashes on a surface.

To demonstrate water's immense weight, Richard drops four tons of water (equivalent to Borodale's annual rainfall over a small area) onto a car. The experiment dramatically illustrates the destructive power of water, emphasizing that while large volumes of water are heavy, real rain is not dangerous due to air resistance breaking down large masses into small droplets.

Richard clarifies the difference between hail and ice pellets, stating that real hail forms in summer thunderstorms and has layers. Through a high-speed gun experiment, he compares the destructive power of layered hail with solid ice, concluding that the laminated structure of hail makes it stronger and more damaging.

Richard investigates how snow, usually perceived as slow, can become the fastest form of water in an avalanche. Walter Steinkogler of the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research explains how dry powder avalanches accelerate at incredible speeds. Richard sets up fences on a mountain slope to measure the speed of a controlled avalanche.

After witnessing an avalanche firsthand and narrowly missing his speed-measuring fences, Richard and Walter analyze high-speed footage. They discuss how the snow breaks into snowball-like pieces, which act as 'ball bearings' to reduce friction and allow the avalanche to accelerate rapidly, even though this particular one was slower than record-breaking events.

The video emphasizes temperature as the most crucial ingredient in weather. Richard explains that the sun heats the Earth unevenly, creating warm rising air (thermals) that drive winds and form clouds. He demonstrates this with paper helicopters over heated metal tables.

Richard investigates how Saharan dust travels thousands of miles to reach places like Bristol. He explains the 'bounce' effect, where smaller dust particles are propelled high into the atmosphere by larger ones. In South Australia, he helps create an artificial dust storm to demonstrate how dust can rise to significant heights, eventually influencing cloud formation and rainfall globally.

Richard explores freezing rain in Montreal, explaining how supercooled water droplets freeze instantly upon contact with cold surfaces. He demonstrates this phenomenon using distilled water and fire truck hoses, highlighting the unique clarity of the ice formed and its connection to how frost develops.

The video describes how minute temperature changes influence the unique, intricate shapes of snowflakes, making each one distinct. Richard then demonstrates how snow continues to transform even after landing, as snowflakes' arms break off and fuse together through a process called sintering, leading to incredibly hard snow, as he shows by fixing a sword upright in a snow pile overnight.

Richard investigates why fog, made of water, appears white. At the Virginia Smart Road, he uses colored lasers to show that fog droplets scatter all wavelengths of light, making them appear white. He then explains that seemingly 'black' storm clouds are often an optical illusion, with our brains exaggerating density differences, though very dense clouds can block more sunlight.

Richard explores the dramatic phenomena of thunder and lightning, which require temperature, water, and wind. He demonstrates how to 'hear lightning' using an AM radio and uses a specialized detector to pick up the actual 'whistling' sound of lightning strikes globally. He then explains that thunder is not the sound of a bursting balloon, but the explosive expansion of air heated by a lightning bolt.

At a research facility, Richard witnesses an artificial lightning strike and explains how the extreme heat (three times the sun's surface temperature) creates a ferocious shockwave by exploding the surrounding air. Using slow-motion cameras and light bulbs, he demonstrates the immense power of this shockwave, showing that it, not the electrical arc, is responsible for the destructive force and sound of thunder.