Deadly Disasters: Blizzards | World's Most Dangerous Natural Disasters | Free Documentary

[Music] [Music] with snow ice freezing temperatures and ferocious winds the blizzard is one of Mother Nature's most effective killing machines but it requires a particular combination of warm moist air Rising through a cold air mass which triggers snow and powerful winds these Drive the falling snow as well as churning up the snow already on the ground to reduce visibility to practically zero and the brutal winds can create a dangerous wind chill that drops the effective temperature of the air to minus 50° C killing anyone caught in its sweeping destruction featuring interviews from leading experts and extraordinary personal stories of survival this episode of deadly disasters will focus on blizzards and extreme cold weather events from all over the world including two historic blizzards to hit the Mid-Atlantic coast of America and a shocking storm that struck Central Europe in [Music] 2017 in meteorological terms a blizzard is a very specific extreme weather event it is spawned by an unusual set of conditions that create the Fatal combination of snow and driving wind resulting in the dangerously low visibility and lethal cold which defined these freak weather phenomenons one of the most severe blizzards in recorded history occurred along the east coast of the United States in March of 1888 nicknamed The Great White Hurrican this m of gale force winds and heavy snowfall caus much of New York City's streets to virtually disappear under the deep snow drifts the storm killed more than 200 of the city's citizens and energized New York City officials to further invest in vital infrastructure adjusted for inflation the blizzard cost the city roughly 665 million us worth of [Music] damage [Music] blizzards may even occur when there is little or no snowfall high winds can whip up snow that is already on the ground creating a swirling mass of Airborne snow that is almost impossible to see [Music] through the official US National Weather Service definition of a blizzard is a storm which contains a large amount of snow blown by winds of at least 56 kmph that reduces visibility to no more than 400 m for a length of 3 hours or more when one or two of these conditions are forecast the National Weather Service will issue a winter storm warning or heavy snow warning if all three criteria are met they will broadcast a blizzard warning blizzards pose extreme danger for a number of reasons the winds in a blizzard can be as powerful as a hurricane and just like a hurricane if they strike coastal areas they can cause surges of flood water that inundate Seaside communities blizzards can last up to 5 days cutting off communities leaving anyone trapped outside with little or no chance of getting to safety or being rescued they reduce visibility which can also kill making travel by car extremely dangerous Drive powdery snow that has previously settled can be thrown into a cloud by the high winds making it impossible to see anything in such a white out it is extremely difficult to tell which way is up let alone see the road ahead the strong winds and cold temperatures that go with blizzards can combine to create another danger the windchill even if temperatures are already Subzero windchill can make the apparent temperature plummet making it feel as cold as -50° C this terrible I can't believe that I'm out here but I am because I have to go to work and I'm a responsible adult now and that's what I'm supposed to do but it's super cold and as you can see I'm still trying to catch my breath expose yourself to this degree of windshield during a blizzard and some terrible things will happen to your body if it's blizzard is forecast or if you're caught in a blizzard so first of all make absolutely sure that you are really well dressed so put as many layers as you can cuz it's not only the snow really it is the wind and the wind chill factor associated with it so this is really what makes you lose heat body heat really quickly bundle up layer up bundle up cover up if you get you got to look ridiculous look ridiculous but stay warm keep keep keep that wind off for your skin to stay healthy we need to maintain a core body temperature of 37° c a drop of Just 2 de can quickly cause serious problems it's at this time that hypothermia will set in triggering symptoms like constant shivering tiredness and fast breathing drop below the 32° C Mark and you will begin to experience poor coordination slurred speech confusion and a clear lack of Judgment at this point your breathing will start to slow If eventually your temperature Falls to below 28° C your body will stop shivering this is a very bad sign as shivering is the body's way of trying to keep you alive due to the confusion you may not even realize what's happening to you bizarrely many victims of hypothermia will start to feel as though they're burning up this is because the muscles have grown tired and let the warmer blood from the core stream back to the skin blizzards can bring chaos to vast SES of land power outages may occur if lines are brought down by Fallen trees by the sheer weight of ice and snow water pipes freeze and the supply of fuel can be [Music] disrupted there have been many deadly blizzards throughout the world in 1993 a blizzard in the US dubbed the Storm of the Century killed over 200 people at its height the storm stretched thousands of kilometers from Honduras in Central America all the way to Canada it resulted in the loss of power to over 10 million households the storm was so widespread that it affected an estimated 40% of the American population even worse in terms of the number of casualties was a blizzard that struck Iran in 1972 where 4,000 lives were lost when a shocking 8 m of snow fell for over a week making it the deadliest blizzard to have occurred anywhere in the world Two Towns were completely buried with their entire populations killed so how exactly does a destructive blizzard form you need warm air moving in and you need cold air moving in and so specifically thinking about the you know the continental United States you need uh low pressure areas uh you need high winds and you need cold cold uh mass of air moving down south the low pressures um are right the way across you the central plains of of America they're very very common the supply of cold air uh from Canada principally I mean the Prairies but also maybe further north such as Greenland and and of course even the Arctic the place that supplies the cold air is often the Canadian prairies this flat open region doesn't hold heat very well and is completely snow covered in winter it gets very little Sun during the short winter days and because it's so far north what little sunlight there is comes in at a shallow angle and has little heating effect the Rocky Mountains provide a geographical feature that also plays an important role what happens is if the jet stream actually moves over like an obstacle like the Rockies there is a concept which we call conservation of vorticity and vorticity is essentially a description of how fast like air rotates and so if air moves over a mountain range or whatever obstacle gets kind of squeezed and when you squeeze air it's bit like an ice skater air starts to swirl faster and if it does that it starts to bend and that bending happens in the wake of the Rocky mountains and this bending is literally an expression of uh low pressure activity so that is not only what we call a truff which is like lower pressure and more active weather in general but it also provides the conditions for smaller low press systems and those that are associated with blizzards to form blizzards are usually associated in people's minds with heavy fresh snowfall we're getting off a little bit early uh trying to beat the storm expecting 2 feet so uh a Gordon stay here in New York no complaints that's it work hard play hard but that is not the only way that blizzards can occur in the Midwest of the United States ground blizzards can strike and they require little or no snowfall whatsoever ground blizzards occur when ferocious winds whip up snow that is already on the ground ground blizzards pose such grave danger because they happen immediately after unseasonably warm air temperatures this can give people a false sense of security despite the fact that there is snow on the ground they may leave home without proper winter clothing but this strangely warm weather may not last long if it is followed by an arctic cold front it can lead to a sudden drop in temperature with winds gusting up to 100 kmph such strong winds will rapidly stir up any snow on the ground leading to White out conditions these blizzards are so lethal because of the cold air temperatures that follow behind the arctic front anyone stranded in a car or forced to walk outside is at risk of serious Frost bite hypothermia or even death in the United States the winter of 2009 to 2010 was defined by snowstorms of historic proportions millions of Americans battled with unusual cold flooding mud slides and blizzards on an astonishing scale that winter saw snow in each of the 48 continental United States not even the Florida Panhandle escaped the icy grip but how did the cold weather manage to reach so far south so we have like a large scale setup which is associate with the jet stream so this is really the waviness of the jet stream itself and in those cases where this waviness is very Amplified so what happens is that the cold air can then drag down all the way to the US and uh even Florida and that's a really huge res of cold air which is just St down south and at the boundary between this cold air and the warm air to the south at the jet so there is a lot of potential to form these smaller Cyclones these smaller low pressure systems and that's the ones that are then associated with Blizzard after the February storm snow blanketed 68% of the nation it was the first time many of the Southern States had ever seen snow the freezing cold extended as far south as Miami which had only ever reported snow once before in 1977 the winter season began with a blizzard in the midwest beginning on the 7th of December and Lasting 3 days that blizzard caused the entire state of Iowa to grind to a halt a second storm Before Christmas deposited up to half a meter of snow on the East Coast from North Carolina all the way up to Boston then over the Christmas holidays yet another snowstorm spamed the Midwest from Texas to North [Music] Dakota December snowfall records were set in many American cities including Oklahoma City Philadelphia and Washington DC but the worst was still to come two blizzards struck the Mid-Atlantic backto back between the 5th and 11th of February rated a major Category 3 storm on the northeast snow impact scale snow eddon as it became known was the seventh worst blizzard in US history before the winter of 2009 and 2010 you'd have been hard pushed to describe Washington DC as a particularly snowy place but all that was to change when ferociously cold wind and snow took hold of the nation's capital the entire east coast of America braced itself for the worst that winter could throw with it the extreme weather was exceptionally well predicted people got ready to dig in and stocked up on Essentials though there were some who waited too long and found their grocery stores empty so now mention we can predict a blizzard uh 4 days in advance as opposed to 2 days in advance so really those extra 2 days which is two decades of uh weather forecast Improvement they really help not only the people at the ground who have to plan their holidays who have to plan uh their businesses but also the policy makers the city managers to prepare for two days on the 5th and 6th of February 2010 the capital was caught in the vicious grip of a ferocious blizzard high winds and extraordinary snowfall continued across the the region late on Friday evening and Saturday it caused death and Chaos with parts of the region buried under half a meter of snow snowfall records were broken at all three area airports with Dallas airport in Washington setting an astonishing single snowstorm record of 82 CM at its brutal Peak the Federal government was closed for almost a week and both Virginia and Maryland declared a state of emergency snow was falling across a s of the Northeastern United States from Southern Indiana Eastward through Pennsylvania to New York City and South down the New Jersey coast through Delaware to Washington authorities blamed the storm for hundreds of accidents and deaths 200,000 people were left without electricity due to down power lines flights were cancelled at the Washington Baltimore area's three main airports and at Philadelphia International Airport where a reported 68 cm of snow had fallen by 1 p.m. whale and bus services were also suspended Delaware Governor Jack marel declared a state of emergency and ordered all vehicles off the roads by 10 p.m. because of the sheer quantity of snow the clear up after the storm was an enormous challenge in addition to the normal slow-going tasks of clearing streets rails runways and Pavements full of snow numerous trees and power lines which had crash to the ground also had to be dealt with power was out for about 200,000 people and it would be 5 days before it returned for many the sheer weight of snow caused structural damage to larger buildings a hanger at Dallas airport collapsed as did several churches and fire stations across the area anything with a flat roof couldn't stand up to the volume of snow stacked on top of it the DC Metro system and train Services were also badly hit all area airports remained down for up to 3 days there was an estimated 500,000 tons of snow to clear in Virginia alone in some locations there was simply nowhere left to put it in many areas special construction equipment had to be brought in to remove the snow but for a few the crippling snow presented an opportunity for winter sports snowball fights cropped up across parts of the city with perhaps the largest being a 2,000 person m in Dupont Circle in an average winter Washington receives a about 40 cm of snow that amount fell in less than 24 hours on two separate occasions it took days before some residents were finally dug out from the snowstorms and that blizzard came less than 2 months after the December storm which had dumped over 40 cm of snow on the capital snowfalls like that were considered a rare event in the DC area now they had occurred twice in one winter in fact Washington DC's final seasonal snowfall total of 1.4 M beat the previous record which had stood since 1899 but the winter was not over after a brief rest bite the chaos of early February was followed later in the month by a 2-day snowstorm that was as powerful as a [Music] hurricane this time it was New York C City that bore the brunt the battering winds and deep snow forced schools and public buildings to close and left more than a million homes and businesses without power the heavy snow forced New York state troopers to close roads at JFK LaGuardia and New York airports 2,300 flights were grounded as Airlines posted major delays that winter Baltimore's old record of 1.5 M set in the winter of 1995 to 96 was obliterated after nearly 2 meters fell over the 2009 to 2010 season Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington DC beat the record snowfall that had stood for over 120 years the 2010 snow mageddon really extreme clate event really EXT extreme blizzard you had this uh body of uh of cold air over Greenland which started to move South uh you've got uh the jet stream bringing in warmer uh wetter weather uh from the Eastern Pacific and when these uh air bodies uh cided then then of course you started getting these severe blizzard conditions but there was another powerful contributor to this terrifying blizzard El Nino El is a regular feature which occurs semic cyclically in the in the Pacific where you have a unusually warm uh surface water in the Pacific forming so the warm water will create a moist warm air which will move across the the western United States and then it will start to get sort of you know sucked into the the low pressure system because it is contains so much water it has the potential then as it calls to drop a a lot of snow um on the US as it meets the the colder air coming down from the north although blizzards are frequent events in mountainous regions they rarely strike cities on the scale they did during snow mageddon that was supposed to be a once- in a-lifetime event but in January 2015 it looked as if it was going to happen all over again computer models run by different agencies in different countries were all saying the same thing that the northeastern us was going to be in the grip of a potentially historic blizzard but unlike blizzards that occurred a few decades ago which often struck without warning this storm was forecast 7 days ahead of time computer models have enormously improved um in recent years they're fed by uh satellite data and uh radar data so that they feed into the models and they give very good patterns which then people can use these patterns to predict what is likely to happen to the weather system these models are allowing people to early on try and make decisions about what is likely to to happen and of course sort of as a library of knowledge is built up you have more confidence in in what you think the outcomes are going to be of these emerging patterns you see every decade we can predict the weather with uh one more day in advance and this is an improvement which really helps to save life and goes to show how important this type of research is on the 20th to the 22nd of January before the storm had even occurred the governors of 11 states and the mayor of Washington DC declared a state of emergency in anticipation of significant snowfall and blizzard conditions but why was this blizzard expected to be so bad so the meteorological indicators are again sort of the emerging intensifying of the low pressure especially as the jet stream gets Su uh sucked into that and the move of high pressure further south maybe bringing in cold air into the southern latitudes more southernly latitudes a swirling Vortex off the east coast sent huge amounts of snow in land driven by sometimes hurricane force winds pelting Washington DC Philadelphia and New York City with well over half a meter of snow based on satellite imagery the storm was soaking up moisture from as far south as the Bahamas and as far east as the Gulf Stream Waters of the Atlantic Ocean up to 85 million people were in the path of this looming monster that meant that one in every four Americans were impacted by a blizzard or winter storm warning 10 eastern US states as well as Washington DC all declared a state of emergency this allowed them to tap into the resources they would need to cope with the impending disaster in Washington mayor Muriel Bowser spared no words in a warning to to Residence she insisted that the oncoming storm had life and death implications and advised everyone not to drive or even walk but instead take shelter and stay off the roads when it finally arrived the storm lived up to expectations tens of millions of people from New York to the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia were caught in a deadly mix of devastating winds and vast am mounts of falling snow Dewey Beach in Delaware and Langley Air Force Base in Virginia recorded Winds of over 120 kmph even in Georgia a state where Winters are usually unremarkable there was snowfall of over 15 cm there were 48 deaths related to the storm and thousands of homes were left without power but in low-lying areas along the coast they didn't just have to deal with record-breaking snowfall the huran force winds caused Storm surges that sent water rushing in from the sea the New Jersey and Delaware shorelines were pounded by 6 M waves and a storm surge of up to 1.5 M sent water levels to alltime highs in some locations as floodwaters turn streets on the Jersey Shore into rivers residents were reminded of the terrible days of Huracan Sandy in 2012 there were record Coastal flood levels recorded at both Cape May the city and seaside resort in New Jersey and Lewis on the opposite side of the Delaware Bay all along the coast the sea was invading the land at Dewey Beach the hurricane force winds caused a surge that washed huge sways of the shoreline out to sea 4 and A2 M of beach were gouged out by the storm further in land many people perished driving in the Ferocious conditions they were either caught out by the storm or had ignored the warnings not to venture out in Pennsylvania a passing snow plow buried a car in which a man then apparently died of asphixiation some people made the mistake of continuing to run their engines to keep warm even though their exhausts were blocked by snow allowing poisonous fumes to enter the car not even the Emergency Services were safe from the shocking conditions for three cities it was the biggest snow storm ever recorded Baltimore a major sea port in Maryland saw 74 cm of fresh snow while in Pennsylania Allentown had to deal with 80 cm but the place that got more snow than anywhere was in Shepherdstown a town overlooking the Potomic River in West Virginia which was buried in well over a meter of snow it was also the first time that a single storm dumped more than 60 CM on New York City New Yorkers who went to bed on Friday expecting to wake up to a few inches of snow Drew their curtains on a raging blizzard it forced Mayor Bill DeBlasio to order a travel ban on city streets something that hardly ever happens meaning that anyone caught driving would be arrested all public amenities were ordered to shut Broadway theaters went dark restaurants closed shops shuttered a deathly hush descended on the most popular city in the United States nearly 13,000 flights were cancelled at the height of the blizzard a quarter of a million people were without power the storm looked so vicious from space that NASA astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted pictures from the International Space Station finally after battering the towns and cities of the East Coast the storm swirled out to sea leaving behind huge accumulations of snow and ice all the way from Virginia in the South up to New York in the north The Weather Service recorded that 68 cm of snow had blanketed Central Park in New York City Sunday was a day of transition the blizzard with zero visibility gave way to a bright clear sky for officials and residents who had hunkered down for 2 days of unrelenting snow and wind it was time to start the cleanup and for others who'd been cooped up indoors for 2 days it was a chance to enjoy the fun side of winter but a day of enjoyment for many gave way to the start of the working week and the headache of commuting New York City where Mayor DeBlasio announced that schools were to open faced the challenge of picking up busloads of school children in streets piled high with snowdrifts in Washington DC the Metro system for the most part was still shut residents in some neighborhoods in northwest DC were effectively cut off behind more than half a meter of snow on unplowed [Music] streets the leadership of the House of Representatives scheduled to convene on Monday said that no votes would be held in the week following the blizzard in Maryland where two major highways had been closed to all traffic mayor Larry Hogan announced that the state would ask for federal disaster relief Aid and warned that clearing the snow would be a long haul project in Baltimore the mayor cautioned that she could not give an end date for when the streets would be cleared but as with many of Mother Nature's deadly disasters there is often a benign side to extreme weather events the snow provides much needed water during the winter of 2018 blizzards and half a me of snow hit Moscow and was welcomed by agricultural experts that's because a heavy blanket of snow is beneficial for wheat crops it protects the developing plant from the harsh cold of Winter the extent to which snow insulates depends on its depth temperatures underneath a layer of snow increase by about 1° C for each 2.5 cm depth of snow because the soil also gives off some heat the temperature at the soil surface can be much warmer than the air temperature when growth of the wheat plants restarts in Spring the melting snow is also a good source of water the end of winter doesn't necessarily signal the end of extreme cold weather phenomena the early summer of 2013 brought extreme weather to Europe in June there were floods followed by a heat wave as Central Europe experienced soaring temperatures in Late July thermometers in the German city of Rin Feldon peaked at 38.6 De C but bizarrely the extreme heat brought with it a s of Destruction caused by hailstones and and on an unprecedented scale ice balls Cannon down on an area of central Germany these monster hailstones measured in at up to 12 CM they cause 2.8 billion EUR worth of damage the most devastating Hailstone event in Germany's history and the world's biggest insurance loss of 2013 so how does ice do that much damage in the summer months in fact how does the ice form at all on a hot Summer's Day the ground will be warmed by the Sun and any moisture will evaporate into the air above it this air will be warm and so as it rises into the cooler atmosphere the moisture will condense and form clouds creating thunderstorms you know we've all seen these uh huge towering Kumon nimbus clouds 10 to 15 kilm high they have a huge updraft These updrafts suck water droplets through the the freezing Zone at this point the the water droplet starts to to super cool and then to become ice and then start to accrete more and more ice to it and they sort of grow a bit like you know onion in in layers and eventually once the once it becomes so heavy that the updraft can no longer support it it then comes crashing down to to Earth some hail Stones can be very heavy they can be moving very high speeds over 170 km per hour when they impact the Earth hailstones are measured according to their diameter but it is easier to estimate its size by comparing it to everyday items to date the largest Hailstone recorded in the US fell in Vivan South Dakota on the 23rd of July 2010 the largest Hailstone recorded in the US it was uh 20 cm in diameter uh weighing about sort of 900 G so you know quite a sizable chunk of of ice that's an officially recorded Hailstone of that size and if that doesn't terrify you then imagine it hitting the ground at 170 km an hour the heaviest hail St ever measured is thought to be one in Bangladesh over a kilogram in in weight it occurred during a a hail storm um 1986 I think it was and that hail storm actually killed over 90 people luckily the hailstones that fell on Germany were not of those proportions and although they caused a huge amount of damage thankfully no one was killed but Germany is no stranger to extreme winter weather each and every year people are killed in blizzards usually in the German Alps on Sunday the 13th of July 2008 a summer blizzard caused tragedy in the Bavarian Alps where 550 people taking part in a Mountain Run were caught out by a freak blizzard competitors were running up the slopes of the Zug Spitzer Germany's highest peak many were dressed only in shorts and t-shirts when the temperature suddenly plummeted to below freezing with winds gusting at 80 kmph the wind chill and low visibility from driving snow had turned a picturesque Mountain into a disaster Zone the first distress core reached Mountain Rescue in the valley below just before midday but for two men help arrived too late they sadly died while a further six people were taken to hospital but it isn't only in Germany's mountains that blizzards can kill on the 16th and 17th of December 2010 much of Germany was paralyzed in the grip of a winter storm that claimed the lives of three people caused hundreds of accidents and left thousands stranded in perilous conditions a colossal winter storm system came in hard and fast catching many people by surprise as temperatures were sent plummeting to -12° C 30 cm of snow fell in a matter of hours bringing chaos not usually seen in that part of the world Frankfurt airport Europe's second largest Hub was forced to close while Emergency Services battled to clear its snowbound runways 1,000 passengers were stranded in the terminal building overnight there was chaos for drivers with most of Germany's Road Network in gridlock at the German French border near fryberg hundreds of lorries were stuck for hours when French authorities closed the motorways due to heavy snow the Red Cross handed out blankets and hot soup to the drivers in North West Faria Germany's most popular state traffic congestion extended for more than 185 km 251 accidents occurred as a result of the winter storm injuring 19 people but 7 years later it wasn't only Germany that felt the icy blast of winter it was the entire continent of Europe winds which became known as the beast from the East transported freezing temperatures and blizzards from Russia into Germany France and the UK it was warmer in the North Pole than it was in much of Europe as both the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans fed milder air into the Arctic in February 2018 the so-called Beast from the East uh hit Europe and what did happen in that case is that in mid-February really cold air Reservoir started to form in Siberia which isn't uncommon for that time of the year and then opposite to what you would usually expect when the circulation essentially pushes the the air from from west to east in that case the cold air slowly moved to the west and started to impact Europe more and more and ended up as a uh pretty severe late winter cold event which uh hit almost all of Europe the physics of what caus these sorts of storms is that uh you have what's called a a polar vortex which is a vortex of of of a low pressure which is sitting over the Arctic in a sense sort of containing the the cold air but as that vortex weakens it will split can split into two quite typically uh one over Greenland Canada one over uh Siberia and actually if the vortex weakens further it will split into even more and actually that will start to push uh the the jet stream uh further south and actually then the the cold air will move uh down into lower latitudes so this is what was happening with the the Beast uh from the East and at the same same time you're having for the United Kingdom you're having and Europe you're having a warmer air moving in from the southwest you know meeting this uh colder air coming as this polar vortex weakened and you have these cold fronts moving in from uh Continental Europe much of Europe was blanketed in snow as icy conditions spread as far south as the Mediterranean Coast Car in freezing winds and accompanying blizzards across the continent temperatures plummeted as low as -30° [Music] C many in the Netherlands refer to the uncommonly cold weather as the Siberian bear not even countries in in the normally mild south of the continent were spared blizzard conditions the monster freeze brought unheard of snowfalls to parts of Spain as well as the Mediterranean islands of Corsica and Capri in Rome's St Peter's Square priests and seminarians from the Vatican threw snowballs at each other and near the Coliseum students could be seen skiing down the historic opan [Music] [Music] Hill snowfall covered the northern Italian cities of Venice Milan chin and Florence and reached as far south as Naples in Ireland and Scotland the highest red weather warning alerts of a risk to life were issued and people were told to stay at home up to 40 cm of snow fell in higher areas of Scotland and hundreds of vehicles were stuck on a Scottish Road overnight stranding some motorists for 18 hours England experienced blizzards and some of the coldest temperatures for three decades hundreds of schools were closed and there were delays on roads Railways and at airports even Switzerland a country well used to blizzards was taken AB by the Sher volume of snow and the freezing temperatures the airport in Geneva was forced to close temperatures dropped to -20° C in some parts of Germany while the zuk Spitzer the country's highest peak was gripped in a record-breaking low of -3.4 De C in the Black Forest region of Southern Germany the 97 M high totau waterfall was frozen solid in the end the the most important part of risk is actually not the hazard and I think that that we um we we are addressing vulnerability in two ways on the one hand we can be far better informed and forewarned about about blizzards through the the increase of science a satellite observation radar but also I think you know the understanding of the importance of of vulnerability means that we're looking you know how we build uh social capital you know who are the vulnerable people uh and how can we helped in in extreme events many people ask what's the role of climate change so do like these winter storms may even become more fragment in the future which is counterintuitive right so there are a couple of uh suggestions and discussions in the research community that do indeed link to a increased frequency of these kind of storms especially like snow storms and there a couple reasons for that first of all if you do have a snowstorm in a warmer World in a world that's 1 to 3° warmer you tend to have more moisture Supply it doesn't matter whether it is winter or summer whether there is super frozen water in the high atmosphere or winds and freezing temperatures at the ground level blizzards can occur in any number of scenarios Mother Nature has proven to us yet again the chilling and unexpected ways she can twist the elements to bring us deadly [Music] disasters [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah

Channel: Free Documentary

Views: 234,585

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre)

Id: Hc21s_bWlaE

Length: 50min 6sec (3006 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023