Meteorologist Breaks Down Natural Disasters in Movies & TV | GQ

lightning doesn't strike twice in the same way common weather myth lightning doesn't strike twice it does absolutely all the time now the odds of any point on earth getting struck twice are slim because you know lightning is the size of a pencil but think of the empire state building or some other skyscraper that has a lightning rod on it lightning strikes there all the time so lightning can strike twice hey gq i'm david yeomans and this is the breakdown first up the day after tomorrow we have live coverage now from our fox 11 chopper are you there bart uh yes i'm here natural disasters are naturally occurring horrible catastrophes that we have no control over and that we often times can't even predict some natural disasters like tornadoes or hurricanes they happen at different parts of the world and they can happen many times in a given year right off the bat this is a really spectacular scene but this part of the movie is taking place in la while la has had some small weak tornadoes over the past 50 or 60 years we've never had multiple tornadoes like this in los angeles and we've never had intense tornadoes like these appear to be in los angeles so a tornado is a violently spinning and rising column of air typically it happens in a supercell thunderstorm which is when you have a really intense thunderstorm with all this rising air called an updraft but then you also have what's called wind shear which is winds at different heights in the atmosphere blowing different directions and also at different speeds and if all those things come together just right you have not only rising air inside of the storm but you have rising and spinning air inside of the storm these tornadoes here have more of the appearance of what's called a supercell thunderstorm so these are the tornadoes that happen in oklahoma or the midwest or even parts of texas this is where the the conditions in the atmosphere are conducive for really intense and spectacular tornadoes the ones that happen in la on the rare occasion that they do happen they would generally be much skinnier much smaller to make a tornado like this in the midwest where it usually happens you need warm moist air down at ground level down at the surface generally in la you have this cool stable air near the surface and actually the air a few thousand feet high is warmer than it is down at the ground so it makes tornadoes like this very unlikely we have live coverage now from our fox 11 chopper are you there bart well we have observed multiple tornadoes at once it's usually just two tornadoes side by side and that even in the midwest or tornado alley is very rare so seeing something like this in los angeles where they really rarely even get tornadoes would be pretty unheard of the most tornadoes i'm aware of happening simultaneously is is three but that is it was from an old photograph and it's quite rare tornadoes are so sensitive to their environment and that's why they never last for that long usually at least they need everything to be just right and if one thing disrupts that it's gone you know you would think it'd be very dangerous to fly a helicopter near a tornado but they actually do this pretty frequently in places like oklahoma a lot of the news stations up there have helicopters and during tornado outbreaks they'll put their choppers up in the sky to give their viewers the best view of the tornado so this can actually be done that's kind of a common myth actually is that mountains protect you from tornadoes or hills protect you from tornadoes the truth is that tornadoes can't happen in mountains and they can happen in hilly terrain why we typically think of tornadoes as happening on flat land that's just because of where tornado alley is it's in the midwest in kansas oklahoma and missouri and most of that land is flat but it's not the flat land that causes the tornadoes it's just happens to be where the meteorological ingredients come together the us has the most tornadoes out of anywhere in the world and we'll get hundreds of tornadoes every single year maybe even some that we don't know about because they happen where the radar can't see very well or where nobody actually saw it with their eyes what you're seeing are two actual tornadoes striking los angeles international airport wait wait it looks like they joined and formed one large tornado oh my god this is unrealistic just from the news perspective because when you're a reporter live on air you would never be driving and having your photographer in the front seat driving is distracting enough driving in a tornado is really distracting two tornadoes like this typically don't combine into one it's not completely unheard of their circulations don't necessarily attract each other if anything they kind of like to be separated so when two tornadoes come together they may actually fizzle out entirely because they may kind of counteract one another or mess up the other's environment unbelievable i've never seen it okay wait pause it there's so much stuff to tear apart so that was a seismograph which measures earthquakes so apparently now there's tornadoes causing earthquakes which is not a thing earthquakes are a geological phenomenon that happens underground and tornadoes are an atmospheric thing they happen up above the ground if a tornado throws some debris you know that's been lofted up in the cloud and then it kind of drops it outside of the wind zone if you will that's realistic that can happen something can plop down onto the ground but if this billboard is getting carried straight up sideways and it creams this guy and takes his body away just like that he wouldn't have been able to be standing there in the first place because i know from experience in hurricanes it's almost impossible for a grown person to stand up in a 60 65 mile an hour wind or stronger these violent tornadoes have winds of well over 100 or 150 miles an hour it looks like so if they're going to throw this billboard past him it is unrealistic that he would just be able to stand there until the billboard crushes him that destruction of a well-built skyscraper is very difficult for any tornado to accomplish even an ef5's the strongest on the scale the enhanced fujita scale zero is the weakest on the tornado scale they have winds of less than 100 miles per hour ef5 is the strongest and those have winds of over 200 miles per hour we've even had doppler radar measurements of tornadic winds over 300 miles per hour before which is pretty unheard of all right let's fast forward to later in this same movie so right there we were looking from space down into a really intense hurricane probably a category four or five and the scale only goes up to five this is unrealistic because a hurricane is a really warm cored storm you would never have a hurricane in a snowstorm or whatever's going on here simultaneously in the same place hurricanes have really moist warm air feeding into them kind of like a tornado you can't have a cold cord hurricane like this one appears to be i love what this thing is modeled after because it is modeled after a real historical event ten thousand years ago a mini ice age it was called the younger driest event so what happened was the earth was warming 10 000 years ago and that global warming actually melted so much of the ice from greenland into the north atlantic ocean that that fresh water melt threw off all of the ocean currents europe especially went into a mini ice age on a very very short scale just about 10 years that in the scale of climate was called abrupt climate change but happening like this is very unrealistic where in this movie it just happens in in minutes or hours to get something like this this looks like you're pouring liquid nitrogen all over it which is like 400 degrees below zero fahrenheit skyscrapers can survive negative 20 or negative 40 degrees as long as they're built for it like we have up in the northern us and in canada actually having something freeze the building like this and explode the windows that's very unrealistic as far as being caused from weather if there were some sudden freeze like this the air wouldn't travel downward if anything in the atmosphere actually when you have sinking air it heats the air up so having the air crawl down the buildings like this into this ultra freeze is a little shaky so a second ago we were kind of in the eye of the hurricane you could see they call that the stadium effect where you're looking at this stadium it's like football stadium and you're the player of clouds around you that are 40 or 50 000 feet high and that's real for a hurricane but it's not real for whatever intense freeze this is the eye of the hurricane like that you would see the sun and you would see the spectacular ring of clouds around you but it wouldn't be below zero like it is here it'd be really warm actually don't let the fire go out this whole monster you know coming through the hallways at you is is not quite how weather works in a fire like that could keep the room warm if it's below zero in the rest of the house or in the rest of that building but then of course the question becomes how long does it stay that cold outside from this disaster and how long can you keep the fire going so in freezing temperatures it's always good to stay at home because a lot of people get in trouble traveling on the roadways in a snowstorm and then they end up sliding off the road or getting into a car accident and then they're stranded so if you do have to travel we always recommend that you have a survival kit basically in the trunk blankets big parkas or jackets some food or water the best way to do it though is to just stay home i really like what the movie is modeled after global warming actually leading to abrupt global cooling because that did happen 10 000 years ago but happening in this way and this dramatic with the whole hurricane spinning over you those were all added in by hollywood unfortunately next up the crown london has been brought to a halt by dense fog which has descended overnight good god the meteorological office has issued a statement saying that the persistent anti-cyclone over london is to blame this is very meteorologically accurate so this was the great london smog of 1952 and thousands of people died and they said it's because of an anti-cyclone well cyclone is a storm and typically storms have rising air and that's how clouds and rain form in an anti-cyclone it's kind of like the opposite air actually sinks on top of you so if you have air sinking on top of you and you're in 1950s london with no pollution controls it smushes all that smog which would usually disperse into the higher levels of the atmosphere right down at ground level it's sort of like a temperature inversion that you see over la and it can really create super dense and very very unhealthy smog and that's what happened for a few days smog is like a dirty fog smog is caused by pollution it's particles like soot or ash or car exhaust that hang out at ground level fog is just a cloud on the ground so a fog is much more pure to last for some time be careful out there it's a real pea super this lasted so long because of the weather pattern dirty growing populous city was emitting all this stuff into the atmosphere and usually they can do that because the wind blows it away or it disperses into the levels of the atmosphere but this persistent sinking air and very calm conditions in the city just trapped all the emissions and all the pollutants right there and it was actually so unhealthy that it killed thousands of people in a short amount of time in some cities around the world you know los angeles parts of china where we have a lot of people in a tiny area and certain weather patterns you can get smog and really dangerous hazardous air that's bad to breathe you see people wearing masks just walking around even before covet 19. la has such bad smog for instance because the cold pacific ocean makes the air right here at the surface and in la cooler than it would otherwise be if you have cold air under warm air it's just trapped right there in place and that's why some of the smog can get trapped too so this is actually a bad idea in pollution and smog that's that thick and that unhealthy you don't want to be outside and especially outside exerting yourself where you breathe more of the particles in you want to be inside because inside even in 1950s london it would have provided you some level of protection from that outside dirty air and now you know with our air filtration in our homes and businesses it would provide you a lot of protection from air that dirty she wanted to keep her appointment which is admirable but it's actually what killed a lot of people is being out in it for a long time next up only the brave prepare deployment side right here now can't go back up there there's no time jesse this is about a real fire in arizona that uh killed a bunch of expert firefighters lightning is actually a huge cause of wildfires and it was the cause of this actual fire in reality as well it's especially dangerous in the desert where you can have what's called dry lightning it's a thunderstorm that's producing lightning and thunder and it's trying to produce rain but the rain actually evaporates on its way down to the ground because the air is so dry in a desert so then you have a spark right but you don't have any water falling from the storm to put a fire out so lightning caused fires are actually super frequent and they're very very dangerous huge fires can actually create their own weather systems it's fascinating fires are so hot and so big sometimes and so intense that it creates this huge current of rising air that current of rising air can make winds within the fire zone 60 70 miles per hour as strong as a hurricane it can also create its own cloud or even sometimes its own thunderstorm right above it so when an electric charge builds up in a cloud an opposing electric charge builds up on the ground underneath it and then to get comfortable boom it releases the charge discharging a bolt of lightning obviously drier terrains are more likely to catch fire than wetter terrains or places that get a lot of moisture or are close to the ocean or swamp land the drier the fuel is like a tree or some grass uh the easier that fuel is going to burn wildfires can move at 15 miles an hour or even faster in localized areas depending on the wind and these guys it's heartbreaking 19 of some of the best firefighters in the world were killed that day if you get trapped inside of a wildfire like they unfortunately were obviously fire is the main issue but also fires that big can use up all the oxygen in the area so that becomes a different problem as well wildfires produce so much smoke and ash into the atmosphere that it can travel across states it can travel across countries continents and oceans and it can have a cooling effect because it can block the sun at a certain location kind of like a cloud is over you or if it travels at lower levels the atmosphere can actually degrade the air quality and be dangerous to breathe even you know we saw an air quality effect in texas from the california wildfires about less than a year ago because the smoke you know moves throughout the atmosphere everything is connected that's why what happens here doesn't stay there uh in the world of weather next up twister you've got to get further ahead of it i know what i'm doing cut across the field bill i know i have to get ahead of it so this was made in the 90s i mean this got a whole generation of people into the weather including me and the special effects even from back in the 90s i think really hold up pretty well today this looks like a very realistic tornado you've got debris spinning around on the ground which is dirt or whatever else is chewed up by the tornado and then the the condensation funnel is basically that tornado itself it's the cloud that extends to the ground that you see here so the whole premise of the movie is also pretty realistic you've got storm chasers who do this sometimes for a living and you've got people trying to put meteorological instruments in the way of a tornado so we can actually make measurements inside of a tornado people still have limited success doing because tornadoes are so unpredictable and so quick it's really really hard to put an instrument in the way of a tornado and then get yourself out of there before it eats you up too weather forecasting technology has really advanced since the 90s but predicting tornadoes especially exactly when and where they're gonna form is still super tricky so if we learn more about how it works we can understand it better and we can predict them better if we can predict them better then we can keep more people safe southeast let's see what she does [Music] tornadoes can bend like that i know it looks kind of wild but especially what we call a rope tornado which is this one right here it's very skinny like a rope from the cloud to the ground they can kind of meander and wave to and fro even as tornadoes generally move from southwest to northeast because that's the way the winds in the atmosphere are generally blowing when it's conducive for a tornado they can still wobble on that path which is another reason it's really really dangerous to chase a tornado and to be that close to it i'm not sure what the what they accomplished by going into a dirt goalie 10 feet beside the road where they already were i guess they're trying to get in front of the tornado to put dorothy the weather instruments in the way but now they're trapped here also you heard right there the tornadoes growling tornadoes obviously don't make any animalistic noises like that they've been described as freight trains pretty often because of the massive amount of wind and debris that it's chewing up as we say but it's not going to sound quite like a lion or a tiger like this you really never know the path that a tornado is exactly gonna take and that's why storm chasing is still super dangerous even with all the technology we have and people who have been doing it professionally for decades they still die sometimes because they get too close or in the wrong path of the wrong tornado and that happened you know just less than 10 years ago in oklahoma so tornado chasing is still something that's really really dangerous even to this day tornadoes typically move maybe 20 to 40 miles per hour so you could technically outdrive a tornado but we really advise people not to do that because at home or at your business or at your school is the safest place if you are trying to out drive it a there might be a traffic jam because other people are trying to do that and then you get stuck in traffic and you get in the path of a tornado or b the tornado might be moving at 60 70 miles per hour and you're on neighborhood streets or somewhere else where you're not able to go that fast there are a few easy things to keep in mind indoors in the lowest floor of the building or ideally underground in a basement if you have one and away from exterior walls and windows and the reason for being as low as possible is because if you're on the second or third floor the winds in a tornado are actually stronger up there because they don't get slowed down by friction with the earth's surface you notice they're both looking into the tornado which is also a theme of this movie from so close the winds would be so strong actually blowing toward the tornado that you probably wouldn't be able to have your eyes open much at all because there's dust and debris floating around your eyes would really hurt if you did open them really really dangerous thing to do they're actually doing it pretty right you're supposed to get as low to the ground as possible in a ditch or goalie to try to you know simulate that underground thing to get out of the wind the common thing about going under an overpass and wedging your body under an overpass has actually been debunked and that's a very very dangerous thing to do the winds can funnel underneath there and get even stronger and also if multiple people try to do that then you've got a traffic jam and you've got people competing for the same space that's very realistic tornadoes have winds so strong they can pull wooden planks off of whatever they're nailed to uh even more impressive than that it can not only throw nails really really fast it can actually throw a plastic straw into a stump of a tree there's a picture after an ef5 tornado the strongest on the scale so really really powerful stuff it's really tough to guess based on looking at a tornado how strong it is as a general rule the skinnier it is the weaker it is and the wider it is the stronger it is but you can't always tell even if the radar tells you how strong the winds are which it does you can't tell how strong it really is on the ground and if the tornado's just over an open field we actually don't know how strong it was because we only know how strong a tornado was by based on the damage it does to whatever type of building it was and how stable that construction was it might be an unknown intensity and that's the way it goes down in the record books is an ef u for unknown where's my truck tornadoes can certainly loft cars and farm machinery like you saw there but it wouldn't happen as neatly as you saw just kind of rising up like the resurrection and it also would be so windy where our heroes are that they would probably get sucked up too if you can lift a car 10 feet from you then that delineation between tornadic winds and calm air is not that sharp it's it's kind of a blurred line if you will of really really windy stuff so it can certainly pick up a truck and drop it somewhere else it could even drop it farther away than this tornadoes can also disappear at the drop of a hat like that they're super sensitive to their environment so if something stops or if something goes amiss in the environment the tornado can just disappear like that next up the wolf of wall street you might run into some chop chop we can handle chop right i mean it's 170 foot yacht this movie is crazy so this is actually everything in this one as far as i can tell is quite realistic this is based on a true story not only after the actual wolf of wall street in the 90s but this exact situation and the captain actually had some reservations because there was according to the weather forecast supposed to be a small storm and some chop as they called it and then they got into some trouble chop is just rough waters on the ocean so uh if you're in a 170 foot yacht you can handle some chop chop is like one to three foot seas or maybe five foot seas how big the waves are but uh what they get into is not chop it's you know deadly terrifying seas that no no private yacht like this could survive storms at sea we don't obviously have weather instruments we don't have weather stations positioned around the ocean so at sea we rely more on satellite data so the satellites are orbiting the earth so it can see all the clouds it can even detect the winds at the surface and it does so actually by detecting the wave height on the surface and using complex math to derive how strong the winds are to get waves that height so this type of storm is actually called a mistral and it happens in the mediterranean sea and what happens is something causes the wind from the alps to rush down through the alps and across the mediterranean toward africa and these winds can get really really strong and they're actually quite hard to predict even to this day mistrals are more of a localized effect they happen when hot air rises to the south of the mediterranean sea so air rushes in to fill the void and you get really strong winds blowing across the mediterranean sea so it's a totally different phenomenon it's not swirling like a hurricane is and it's it's a smaller scale feature than a hurricane is too away from 20 feet of buildings you could have 20 foot waves from hurricane force winds for sure and the waves in an event like this as strong as it was can be 50 feet or even higher you probably wouldn't have the moon at all so it wouldn't be this bright at all you'd be in the middle of a storm and clouds and it'd be quite dark outside you wouldn't be able to see the ocean as well as we can see it here now yachts like this do have really powerful headlights basically and also side lights and backlights so they can light up the immediate area around them but we wouldn't be able to see the whole ocean like this that's kind of for effect i think it's every uh captain's worst nightmare if you have 20 or even 50 foot seas like we had here and there's a rogue wave rogue waves can actually be one and a half times that height or even twice that height a rogue wave is where two waves come together just right to where they kind of double each other you know it's we call it constructive interference instead of destructive interference in physics they can actually build upon each other and that can double the wave height which is uh it looks like what happens here next up war of the worlds this is one of my favorite things about weather is you know in our age of digital distractions and phones always in front of our faces weather has the power to make everybody stop what they're doing i can kind of captivate everybody and take center stage that's one of the things that i love most about it so the light in the middle of it is baffling i would think there's probably an alien invasion happening but a dark lowering of the clouds that's swirling like this that could be a wall cloud which is the beginning signs of a tornado what the wind is blowing toward the storm that is weird there are a few things in this movie that are actually pretty meteorologically in tune and that was one of them he said it's so weird the wind is blowing toward the storm so typically in a storm if you have rain coming out of a cloud and coming toward the ground that rain cools the air hits the ground and it has nowhere to go but out but this can actually be another sign of a tornado because instead of rain cooled air hitting the ground and spreading out from the storm it's inflow it's the storm itself sucking air in at the ground level into what could become that that rotating column of air that's the tornado so a typical thunderstorm cloud is just kind of low and it's dark and it might be kind of messy we call it a scud cloud sometimes it looks like just debris of weird clouds littered around are you okay we all know what thunder sounds like and if you're that close to lightning it's really a loud cracking and like a deafening boom so that's what they would be hearing it sounds a little bit weird and he's kind of picking up that maybe this isn't weather-related you can certainly have lightning without rain but you can't have lightning without thunder there's always thunder it's just you're too far away from it lightning causes thunder because it super heats the air to 50 000 degrees fahrenheit it's way hotter than the surface of the sun even so when it super heats the air in an instant like that it creates a sonic boom that radiates outward from the lightning strike itself and that's thunder if you're super close to it it sounds like a really loud crack and if you're really far away from it it's more of a slow rolling boom in a lightning storm if you're outside you are in danger of being struck even if you're 10 or 20 miles away from the storm and it's not even raining where you are we call that a bolt from the blue because there can actually be sun shining but if there's a storm next to you nearby you can actually get struck by lightning and killed in a lightning storm the safest place to be is in a vehicle which is kind of conducts the electricity around you and is grounded or insulated by the rubber tires or at home is even better if the worst does happen and lightning strikes close to your home or if it strikes your home it's unlikely to actually conduct the electricity to your body it's not gonna hit there again okay because lightning doesn't strike twice in the same way common weather myth lightning doesn't strike twice it does absolutely all the time now the odds of any point on earth getting struck twice are slim because you know lightning is the size of a pencil and you know what are the odds of that versus somewhere else but think of the empire state building or some other skyscraper that has a lightning rod on it lightning strikes there all the time so lightning can strike twice next up mad max fury road so what they're driving into is a big dust storm which meteorologically is called a haboob the ward has origins in the middle east where they actually see dust storms like this but you can get them here in the desert southwest in the u.s this can happen along a front you know a big gust of wind that comes from a cold front or from a thunderstorm with cool air expanding outward from it basically a big gust of wind blows over the desert and it picks up all the sand and dirt and dust particles and it locks them into the air even a couple thousand feet into the air and it creates this big cloud that's blowing towards you what you're really just seeing is a big gust of wind blowing towards you but it's visible all of a sudden because there's all kinds of dust and particles in it i don't know that there's uh much of a difference practically between a dust storm and a sandstorm maybe the size of the particles that are being lofted both dust and sandstorms create really low visibility uh gusty winds and uh actually hazardous conditions if a dust storm is ever coming at you like that going inside is the best case scenario if you are trapped outside in a vehicle you want to stop because you won't be able to see much all of a sudden when it hits if you're really outside walking in it you want to get eye protection on as soon as you can you also want to maybe wrap a cloth around your face or have a face mask on of some sort that'll protect your lungs from breathing in those particles dust storms can have winds of maybe 30 or 40 miles per hour maybe 50 miles an hour and a really strong one but they're not really known for damaging winds or strong winds they're just known for dropping visibility and looking really spectacular if you see one so this is based on reality but it's dramatized a bit the lightning there's no reason there would be lightning inside of a dust storm so that's one thing that's a little bit inaccurate so now it's almost like he's breached the wall of the dust storm and now he's inside of it and he can all of a sudden see everything that's not quite the way these dust storms or haboobs work it would just be a constant cloud of low visibility and dust you don't really get inside of it and are all of a sudden able to see you would not have sand tornadoes or dust tornadoes inside of a dust storm there's no reason meteorologically that you would ever have a tornado inside of this a big wall of dust a big haboob can can blow across you know tens of miles or even hundreds of miles in a massive one but typically they last for a pretty short amount of time maybe an hour or two at the most the biggest ones you can actually see them from space from satellites if they're really wide and they last for a little while but the smaller scale ones may just be a few miles across and last a shorter amount of time [Applause] this is uh one of the more unrealistic dust storms i've seen in hollywood movies when they were driving outside of it toward it it did look realistic with a big you know high and massive wall of dust but you know once you get inside of it the lightning is fake the good visibility that wouldn't happen uh and once you get inside of it these massive tornadoes that would not happen either probably one of the more accurate things here is that there can be this reddish or orange hue to the dust itself it just matters about what color the land is or what color the dust is that that strong wind is picking up it looks like it's illuminated by the sun here which wouldn't be the case just because of the low visibility caused by the dust cloud itself next up the impossible this is quite realistic this is actually modeled after the 2004 indonesian tsunami one of the deadliest in history a tsunami is an undersea earthquake so in an earthquake two pieces of land along a fault line in between them are either displaced sideways or vertically and in this event part of the ground underneath the ocean was displaced vertically all of a sudden more than a hundred feet so it's like if you took half of your bathtub split it into two and it's full of water and then you lifted half of your bathtub up really high that water would slosh everywhere all of a sudden right that's exactly what happened in this tsunami and a tsunami wave is not like a typical wave that you can kind of dive through and then come out the other side which goes like this a tsunami wave is just an increase in the level of the ocean that just comes in like a wall and it stays deep and high so it's not a wave that crashes over you and then it's gone it's just like the ocean is all of a sudden 20 feet higher and it bulldozes everything that it takes over so before a tsunami happens oftentimes they say that the animals know or the birds may be flying away but what you're seeing here is actually it looks like the wind was blowing out toward the sea the ocean can often retreat in advance of a big tsunami wave and that actually has a deadly effect all the tourists here in indonesia or wherever the tsunami may be flock out to the ocean and they even walk in the seabed because this is so cool you know the ocean is disappearing what's going on but the ocean is only drawing out to come back in in a major destructive deadly way and that's what we're seeing here predicting a tsunami is as hard as predicting an earthquake there's actually this uh tsunami warning center for the whole world that operates out in the pacific and all they do is monitor earthquakes that happen on the ocean bed or anything close to the ocean bed that could potentially cause a tsunami so if there's an earthquake detected that they think could cause a tsunami they'll issue a tsunami warning for the affected coasts and in this case folks did not have much warning at all tsunamis happen most often in the pacific basin as opposed to the atlantic ocean although they can happen anywhere and the reason is we've all heard of the ring of fire which is the big fault line that circles around the whole pacific ocean that's kind of where most of the earth's active volcanoes are and that's where the active fault lines are so that's where a lot of the underwater earthquakes are a tsunami is just a huge wave so where you are it might not last for that long but it can propagate across the whole ocean for hours and hours and it's actually interesting if you have a really deep ocean this tremendous amount of energy and a tsunami wave is actually just a few inches high because it's kind of dispersed throughout the depth of the ocean from the floor up to the the air we breathe if you're out on a cruise ship a tsunami might pass by you at several hundred miles per hour in the deep ocean without you even noticing it's a tiny little wave and then it's gone but as it approaches land it slows down and it builds up higher and higher because the sea gets shallower so the tsunami when it hits shore and shallower ocean bed they can be 20 feet high 40 feet high or even over a hundred feet high in the worst tsunamis so you know a big wave crashing into a hotel like this is absolutely realistic and flowing water is exponentially more powerful than flowing air like wind so you know having a chunk of water flowing through a house at five miles per hour or 30 miles per hour or whatever it can wipe everything off of the map as opposed to you know a 30 mile per hour wind which we can all sustain to prepare for a tsunami you just have to go to higher land and hope that you have enough time to get there if you're vacationing on the beach like these unfortunate folks were and there is no warning you probably will not survive a tsunami they're one of the least survivable natural disasters because of the power of the water and the drowning risk tsunamis can certainly travel a few miles inland from the beach actually which is pretty terrifying if you think about it it seems safe that far away but as long as the land is flat and if the tsunami has the power to do so it will bulldoze everything for several miles so a big powerful tsunami one of the most powerful tsunamis we've ever seen hitting a very flat land like we are here in indonesia it's really a worst case scenario next up dante's peak great movie i think it's a lot of fun and it also holds up pretty well today even though it's a little older special effects are cool the volcano science seems pretty realistic to me what we're seeing right here is the volcano kind of blowing its top so all the hot magma and gases that are built up inside of the earth typically uh they for one reason or another are exploding out of the top of this mountain so that right there is the pyroclastic cloud it's a cloud of super hot gases from inside of the earth and also ash and lava and pieces of rock and all kinds of stuff it can rise actually at 400 miles per hour and even expand outward at several hundred miles per hour if the volcano is hot enough and powerful enough it can actually rise so high into the sky and for so long it can actually create a huge thunderstorm cloud with particles bumping into one another really fast create electricity and actually create lightning like most natural disasters geologists and volcanologists try to predict when a terrible volcano is going to happen and that's actually the premise of this movie we're still trying to do that now there are some markers in the field of geology that can tell you that a volcano might be coming but we still can't predict with any accuracy when or how bad a volcanic eruption is going to be you know a big violent eruption with that kind of force could certainly shatter buildings or 18 wheelers or windows that are in the way and he's telling the kids to get down there's not much you can do of course if you're in the path of this pyroclastic cloud or the pyroclastic flow of magma and hot gas and ash but he's probably telling them to get down to stay away from the windows of the vehicle because there's flying debris and that might help them a little bit so that can actually expand outward that fast and kind of come at you at several hundred miles per hour the hot gases and ash they're rushing at them right now we're trying to get out of the way let's see what happens i don't think they'd be able to out drive this this hot cloud of gases and ash coming at them when they're racing through the town here it looks like they might be going like 40 or 50 miles an hour and you know the force of a volcano can certainly expand outward faster than that so they might be in trouble here driving into a tunnel or a mine shaft like that might provide you some protection from the debris and from what's going on outside but you know the direction of the volcanic eruption is still going into that tunnel the same way they drove as well so i i'm not sure they'd be able to survive that even in there next up crawl it looks like we're in the middle of a hurricane here in this movie some parts are realistic some parts are not a hurricane is a low pressure system a big organized 100 mile across storm or larger that forms over the ocean and if the conditions are just right and the water in the ocean is warm enough the storm will keep swirling it'll keep big thunderstorms building and it gets winds of 74 miles per hour or greater and then it becomes a hurricane this is actually pretty realistic except it would be a little bit windier than this i know from experiencing a hurricane is almost impossible to stand up in they don't look too flustered by the wind which they would be but you also get what's called the storm surge flooding where if you live near the ocean the level of the ocean actually rises and that happens for two reasons the the wind from a hurricane piles the whole ocean into the land second of all the lower pressure in the atmosphere inside of a hurricane actually exerts less of a downward force on the top of the ocean so if you're not pushing the top of the ocean down as much believe it or not this bubble of higher ocean levels actually forms in the middle of a hurricane it's from all the rising air the atmosphere is almost lifting off of the earth itself so the ocean itself is able to kind of lift up as well and fill that void i wouldn't suggest walking through this you see the car starting to float away even just a foot of moving water can wash a car away only six inches of flowing water can wash me or you off of our feet even with our best efforts the other dangerous thing about this you don't want to be outside in a hurricane for obvious reasons flying debris but also because of power lines water is a really good conductor of electricity so if that wire is still alive it'll electrocute you if you're within even a somewhat close radius you don't even have to be right next to it it's a little bright for a hurricane in a hurricane the visibility is really low you can't see the clouds everything's just gray and swirling and blowing you don't have visibility of the cloud bases or of any bright spots from the sun like you see here to prepare for a hurricane if you live near the coast because remember they only form over the ocean it's good to have a few days supply of food water and a backup generator if you can to run some basic parts of your home like maybe the air conditioner or lights things that you need to survive of course if a really powerful hurricane is coming officials will issue a voluntary evacuation where you can leave if you want or a mandatory evacuation if it's really dangerous where you have to leave and it's actually a crime to stay above us yes this is being in the hurricane eye i've only been in a hurricane eye at night if you're in the eye of a hurricane in the day that's kind of a storm chaser or meteorologist's dream because you get this spectacular visibility it is completely calm there's no wind or just a light breeze and the clouds around you might be 45 000 feet tall and you can actually see all of them around you very hard to get into the eye of a hurricane of course most people don't want to be there so not good for them the eye wall of a hurricane is actually the most dangerous part which is if you think of the eye like a donut with the cut out in the middle the eye itself the hole in the middle of the donut is completely still and it might be sunny and no wind at all but the donut itself surrounding that circular eye that's the eye wall and that's the ring of terror that's you know where the strongest winds are the most lightning can be that's where all the destruction takes place so that's another unrealistic thing if they walked outside just before the eye got to them that means they walked outside in the eye wall which would have much much stronger winds and be much less survivable than what we see here next up everest this is quite realistic so far you can get a thunderstorm in the mountains with lightning and rain like what is base camp of everest in this movie and then at higher elevations you wouldn't experience that as rain it would be cold enough for snow or little pellets of ice to be hitting you of course it'd be super windy in this storm at such a high elevation and you'd need to brace yourself against the wind and brace any exposed skin from all that stuff flying at you in the air and this is what's less realistic if you're climbing mount everest or in any high alpine environment you don't want any of your skin exposed in an environment like this the windchill is constantly well below zero it could be 80 below zero which will give your exposed skin frostbite in just minutes and also your eyes you would never uncover your eyes whether it was sunny up there or stormy up there if it's stormy and windy there's snow flying in your eyes the cold wind is really harsh on your eyes so you need to protect them from that even if it's sunny and a little less windy it's so bright up there because you're above like a half of the earth's atmosphere you're above it so there's little to protect you from how bright the sun is also you've got a huge mirror under you and all around you that's snow so you can actually go snow blind they call it if you're not wearing really good sunglasses or really good goggles so in meteorology the term ice storm actually refers to freezing rain which is not quite as exciting as this it's where you have really cold air down at the ground which is below freezing but then up higher in the sky it's quite warm so if something falls from a cloud it falls as a raindrop and then it hits the ground and then maybe the surface of your car or the road or the bridge is below freezing so it turns into ice once it's on that surface an ice storm doesn't necessarily mean that ice is falling from the cloud typically that's just little pieces of snow that are falling from a cloud what we're looking at here is like a warm weather convective thunderstorm these big it looks like a piece of cauliflower right but a huge piece of cauliflower the updrafts are really strong so that the cloud is growing and mushrooming and blossoming it has really sharp edges on the cloud we call that a cumulaform cloud this only happens in warm moist tropical environments so this is a thunderstorm you might see in miami or even in the midwest that could produce a tornado but this is not the type of a thunderstorm that you would see close to mount everest in the himalayas you can get lightning in a mountain thunderstorm even that high but it won't be as common and most storms that you'll get on mount everest they don't look anything like this they're not pretty and have sharp edges that you can see coming they're kind of just like a blob of gray coming at you if you're climbing a mountain like this just the willingness to turn around is how i would suggest preparing for mount everest type of storms people have gotten in trouble when they're stubborn and there's a storm coming and they're 100 yards from the summit but you know 100 yards at 29 000 feet elevation takes you a while because you got to walk really really slowly the willingness to turn around is a good survival tactic i think on everest lightning and thunder are much more rare with snowstorms that's why when you get what's called thunder snow it's a really exciting thing for meteorologists typically lightning and thunder are more of a warm weather thunderstorm occurrence so there has been lightning on mount everest before it's more likely down at base camp than it is on the summit but you know on a storm like this they're showing frequent lightning and what looks like a summer day thunderstorm it just wouldn't quite be like that thank you guys so much for watching these clips with me i had a blast this has been my lifelong passion so this is really what gets me excited and hope you enjoyed it as well we'll see you next time

Channel: GQ

Views: 874,440

Rating: 4.9349303 out of 5

Keywords: breakdown, david yeomans, disaster movie, disaster movie breakdown, gq, gq magazine, mad max: fury road breakdown, mad max: fury road storm, meteorologist, meteorologist breakdown, meteorologist breaks down, natural disaster, natural disaster breakdown, natural disaster movie, natural disaster movies, natural disaster scene, natural disaster scene breakdown, natural disasters, the breakdown, the crown breakdown, the day after tomorrow breakdown

Id: dIMrWQCJ_mA

Length: 46min 9sec (2769 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Neymar1171]

The guy knows his stuff