Word: storm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Three days after Hall's optimistic assessment, Weathers, face burned black and arms nearly useless, would be one of the surprise survivors of one of the worst alpine disasters in recent memory. On the night of May 10 a storm swept the summit's fearsome "Death Zone" with snow, bitter cold and hurricane-force winds. Within 24 hours, eight of the more than 30 climbers on the peak were dead, among them Hall and Scott Fischer of Seattle, who was also running a commercial tour...
...actually feel something for that poor, dumb, terrified thing. Imagine yourself quaking in her hooves: one minute you're chewing your cud, the next you're a UFO. But aside from one poor guy in the prologue, who disappears headfirst into a big storm's "suck zone," Old Bossy is the only living creature we see suffering from nature's wrath in this film. The rest of the time the movie implies that tornadoes practice selective targeting, attacking only trucks with no visible drivers or farms where everyone has safely gained the storm cellar...
...after another. In the proliferating genre of severe-weather videos and TV specials, nature in extremis provides the voyeuristic thrill of an environmental porno flick. Houses pummeled by hurricane-force winds tumble into the sea. People run screaming from rooms rocked by earthquakes. And in video shot by professional storm chasers and plucky amateurs, funnel clouds whirl forebodingly, kick up a storm of debris and move menacingly closer. Sometimes too close. In one oft-seen clip, a family scrambles for shelter as a tornado bears down on their living room: "Tree just blew over...Get away from the windows...
Heavy weather, of course, has long been a TV passion. Nothing gets a network newsman's juices flowing like a good hurricane, with its made-to-order suspense ("the eye of the storm is expected to hit land at 9 p.m....") and the opportunity for daredevil theatrics (Dan Rather clinging to a pole in Panama City, Florida, as Hurricane Opal hits). Local weathercasters in the nervous Northeast treat every approaching snowstorm as if it were the coming Armageddon...
...fascinated with rampaging nature? For one thing, it's something we can all relate to and be in awe of. "Severe weather is the great equalizer," says Bob Potter, director of home video for National Geographic Television. Watching people getting manhandled by violent storms, moreover, adds a little excitement to our own humdrum battles with the elements. (Better bundle up--and take that umbrella!) Perhaps, too, it makes us a little more comfortable in our own good sense. Those crazy storm chasers may get some neat pictures, but at least we know enough to come in out of the rain...