THAT’S AMAZING
The Weather Channel & Great Big Story bring you, 'That's Amazing,' which takes audiences into the great outdoors to find people doing awesome, untold, and curious things with weather and the elements, all around the world. Each one-hour episode features six to eight stories of passion, daring, and inspiration.
THE HAND BUILT FOREST
About one-third of the United States is covered in forests, but in places like Colorado, those forests are in danger. There's fire, pest infestations, and global warming to contend with—fortunately, there's hope. In Nebraska. Yes, at the Charles Bessey Tree Nursery in Halsey, Nebraska, biologist Richard Gilbert is on a mission to preserve and repopulate national forests in the Rockies. When disaster strikes, Gilbert's seasonal labors in raising trees for the repopulating mission go to good use.
THE TSUNAMI BALL
In March 2011, a massive earthquake and resulting tsunami ravaged Japan's eastern coast. At the time, Chris Robinson was in the middle of a business meeting, but the subject of his meeting immediately turned to ways of helping people in similar disasters. He decided right then and there to build an escape pod based on a sturdy spherical design. Complete with an electric motor and solar panels, Robinson's "tsunami ball" would act as a mini safety pod, allowing people to navigate over short distances during an inland tsunami. Without any prior shipbuilding experience, he launched himself into the project—sometimes, the will to build and learn trumps any expertise.
MAN-MADE LAVA
Ingo Sonder and Andrew Harp are two guys in upstate New York who make incredibly dangerous and risky explosions. Don't worry! It's for science. They're researchers at the University of Buffalo's Center for Geohazards Studies, and their work focuses on large-scale disasters like volcanic eruptions. It sounds great in theory, except there's no natural lava for them to study in Buffalo. So Sonder and Harp brave temperatures exceeding 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit melting rocks to make their very own lava for their explosive experiments.
THE WEATHER BALLOON SISTERS
When it comes to after school activities, Rebecca and Kimberly Yeung may be some of the most motivated students in America. At 11 and 9 years old, these sisters took their interests in science and technology and launched a space program with weather balloons to gather data about our climate. After their first launch successfully climbed to 78,000 feet, President Obama caught wind of their work and invited them to the White House Science Fair. Perhaps even the sky is no limit for these young scientists.
THE SOUNDS OF WEATHER
In Hollywood, everything is magic and make-believe, even sounds. When you watch a film that immerses you completely in its world, you’re probably hearing the work of sound artists. If the work is done right, you won’t be able to tell that the “natural” sounds on screen are manufactured with studio props. That's the challenge for Warner Bros. Foley artists Alyson Moore, Chris Moriana and mixer Mary Jo Lang. Theirs is a practice in recreation, one creative element at a time.