The World's Weirdest Weather (2013)

Alex explores strange weather associated with fire, from firenadoes to upward lightning, lightning created in volcanic explosions and raging bush fires called firestorms; as well as exploring how lightning storms rage on planets millions of miles from Earth. Lightning strikes Earth 45 times a second. Britain gets around 300,000 strikes, with between 30 and 60 people being hit. The programme hears remarkable first-hand accounts from those who have survived lightning strikes, and learns about the strange effects lightning can have on a human body. Alex travels to Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, the lightning capital of the world, where there are near-constant lightning storms with thousands of strikes every night. Footage captured by the public on smartphones and digital cameras reveals the many varied forms lightning can take, from St Elmo's fire coursing through the fuselage of a commercial airliner, to ball lightning high in the sky and lightning inside a snow storm.

Alex reveals the staggering power of air, and learns how it creates strange weather, from tornadoes spinning on the spot to Biblical-scale dust storms, mirages, double rainbows and dust devils (columns of dust spinning over the surface). Air can also be deadly. Just over 60 years ago, really strange weather gripped London. Alex investigates how a freak set of conditions conspired to create deadly smog and London's worst pollution disaster. It was an event that killed thousands and led to new legislation to protect air quality. Our atmosphere also conjures up beautiful and spectacular phenomena: angels cavorting in the mist, double rainbows and even double sunsets. But there's a flipside of even the most stunning events. The northern lights, the auroras, are the frontline in a battle between our atmosphere and a deadly stream of radiation blasted out of the sun called the solar wind.

Alex looks at how water can create freakish weather events around the planet. He learns about how a strange combination of weather phenomena created the deadly storm of 1953, which resulted in the UK's worst flood. Over 300 people died in the UK and thousands more in Germany and Holland. Eyewitnesses to the tragedy tell their stories of survival in the face of the onslaught of water. Not all water weather is lethal; Alex learns how rocks move silently across a desert floor and explains how dying micro-organisms in the water turned the sea into froth like a cappuccino, turning a Scottish village into a nightclub foam party. He also investigates weather events that take weirdness to a new level: a rain of worms in Scotland, giant hailstones called ice bombs, and a strange underwater wave that may explain the Loch Ness Monster.