It's falling ice crystals that make their delicate trailing streaks.
135. OK, good.
Every cloud has its favourite habitat.
Like some rare animal, this cloud is only found in one part of the world.
The morning glory, only seen in eastern Australia in the early morning,
before the sun burns it away.
I can't believe it.
I just can't believe it.
Yep, it's equal.
I'm amazed at the taste of equal.
If you're a quick pick player, how would you like six more chances to win gold lotter?
Well, try a super quick pick.
It's just as quick, just as easy.
And it gives you six more chances to win.
So ask for a super quick pick.
Wouldn't it be nice to have six more chances to win a million?
Heartworm disease can kill dogs.
But there is a way to prevent heartworm disease that only has to be given once a month.
And it is made with real beef, so it's chewable.
Preventing heartworm disease is easy for dog owners and a delight for dogs, as you can see.
Chewing this monthly meaty treat sure beats the old pill routine, and it sure beats heartworm.
Is your dog's heart guarded? Talk to your vet.
Wednesday, catch the world's worst drivers.
It could be any one of these next characters.
See a madman's dash through Paris.
Highway freewheeling and a driver with nowhere to go.
It's unbelievable. Police, camera, action. Wednesday on 7.
Of all the clouds, the most mysterious, the most majestic, the king of the sky, is the all-powerful Thunderhead.
Fueled by the heat of the sun, this cloud contains the power of a nuclear bomb.
The water suspended within it has taken a unique form.
It is icy cold, minus 40 degrees, but unfrozen.
These are clouds of liquid ice.
At the thundercloud's core, hailstones are made.
Held aloft by 90 mile an hour winds, they grow layer upon frozen layer of ice until they are spat from the storm.
Sun grows so big they can shatter car windscreens, kill livestock, even take lives.
Farmers call it the white plane. This one lost $45,000 in minutes.
We kept watching the cloud and it kept getting closer and closer and had a greenish gray color to it.
And so we knew it was pretty sure there was hail in it.
And then it started real small hail and real quite a time in between.
It just kind of would hit, plink, plink, and then it started just unloading.
The leaves, of course, were stripping off the trees just like the sky had opened up and the wind was driving it.
It knocked every window out of the house and the hail was driving into the house from the force of the wind.
Swollen by its cargo of some 500,000 tons of water, a thunderhead can even break into the stratosphere, reaching 10 miles into the sky.
But a thundercloud's powers are not all to be measured in pyrotechnics.
It has a deadlier weapon still, and it is invisible.
A cold wind crashing down out of the cloud, strong enough to knock a plane out of the sky.
A microburst.
Pilots and air traffic controllers know microbursts only too well.
Since 1970, they have been the biggest single cause of plane crashes in the United States.
If a plane is caught by one on takeoff or landing, it's unlikely to survive.
In the summer of 1988, Denver Airport was chosen for a research project aimed at studying and filming these deadly downdrafts.
It was important to discover just how common these invisible killers are.
And the scientists got a shock.
We had no idea what to expect.
We thought maybe we'd see 20 or 30 of the things over a period of three or four months.
And the last time anybody bothered to count, we counted up about 186.
So they're pretty common.
As the scientists filmed this microburst, an aircraft coming into land was caught in it.
They could only watch in horror.
The image stays with me to this day because the airplane got quite low, well short of the runway.
And I saw the nose come up and the airplane continued to sink.
And I thought the airplane got quite close to the ground.
And I asked the controller there, because they watch these things a lot more than I do, how close he thought it got.
And he said within 50 feet.
It kept me awake for quite a couple of nights thinking about what could have been.
The problems that pilots face is without any foreknowledge that what's there and how strong it is.
They have no idea of knowing what's to come.
A pilot's natural inclination is to do all the wrong things.
Dallas, Texas, April 1985.
105 people died when this plane was caught in a microburst as it was about to land.
Okay, instruments cross checked. We're VFR, landing and runway 26.
Now pilots can learn from the disasters of the past.
This pilot flies a computer program taken from the black box of the Dallas plane.
Wind shear, wind shear, wind shear.
400 descending.
Go around thrust, please.
Go around thrust.
300 descending.
250 descending.
300 level.
250 descending.
300 climbing.
200 descending.
250 climbing.
350 climbing.
Looks like we're out of that, Bernie.
It is mysterious.
Here's this stuff that comes from water vapor and it does these things with unimaginable power.
I certainly don't enjoy the damage that it does, the people that it hurts, the airplanes that it crashes.
But it's a bit like nature unveiled.
And to think that it comes from thin air is one of the most astonishing things of all.
Thin air and a little bit of water vapor and some sunlight.
And that's what makes it go.
It's truly awe inspiring.
Excuse me, isn't it time we had a chat about flea treatment?
Hey, mate, Frontline's the only one we need and it lasts for months and months.
Listen, sweetie, Frontline kills fleas and ticks.
Frontline can even be used on young kittens.
News travels fast.
Frontline, it's the only flea killer you need.
Here at First Provincial, it's the people who come first.
You and you and you and you and you come first.
You and you and you and you and you come first.
Here at First Provincial, it's the people who come first.
There's a new tea that's full flavored, yet refined.
With soft golden overtones.
It's Trent Nathan's favorite label.
Other than Trent Nathan, of course.
New Lipton Yellow Label.
With two all beef patties, delicious bacon, cheese, mustard, ketchup and onions,
a double beef and bacon burger, both are hard to resist.
You and you and you and you and you come first.
Here at First Provincial, it's the people who come first.
Join Noni and John for bushfire protection advice.
That's why I'm up here cleaning out the gutters.
Graham has potting tips.
Now that's a real Aussie welcome for your front door this Christmas.
Plus celebrity cook Monica Travaguer.
There you are.
On Better Homes and Gardens, 7.30.
Then at 8 o'clock, don't dream about it, do it.
Join Ernie in the Flinders Rangers and Queensland's Atherton Tablelands.
That's a treat.
Brigid tastes tropical tonga.
Anne-Marie cruises the Murray.
And a great outdoors.
After Better Homes and Gardens, Tuesday on 7.
Moisture sucked up by the sun and falling again as rain.
The essential cycle of life on earth.
But when thunder clouds burst, quite incredible quantities of water can fall.
In less than an hour of torrential rain, a quiet river can turn into a flash flood,
the weather's biggest killer.
Yesterday, Lindmouth was a peaceful holiday resort.
Today, it is a ruin.
In August 1952, a flash flood swept away the heart of this Devon village.
Three months' worth of rain had fallen in a single day.
As dusk fell, a wall of water 40 feet high roared down through the village,
hurling trees with a force of battering rams.
On a sunny summer afternoon, it's hard to imagine that Lindmouth could ever be threatened
by its two picturesque rivers.
In 1952, it was packed with visitors, as it is today.
There was almost nothing to prepare them for what was to come.
I thought it was quite an eerie experience.
It was a gunpowdery colour of sky, you know.
Something that made you feel you had to go home.
A sudden wall of water came down, colossal about the water.
It made the ground tremble as the rocks thundered down the river.
We rushed outside the shop.
As we got outside, we were washed onto these railings
with this wave of water which came down way steep.
You could hear the rocks rolling all around,
and people calling out, squealing out.
You could hear the houses crashing, you know.
Repeated flashes of lightning lit up the scene.
And in a flash of lightning, you could see that there were different coloured layers of vapour
above the water, ranging from dark brown near the water
up to light yellow and beyond above.
And there was a strong smell, not an unpleasant smell,
one of wet earth rather than slimy mud, you know.
I was then in the mainstream of the water.
A telephone kiosk alongside me went over as well.
And it floated with the air still inside it,
so I grabbed hold of the telephone kiosk
and went down the road with the telephone kiosk.
And as I got back towards where my wife was,
hanging onto these railings, I was calling out to her.
I saw Dick Freeze floating by, and I heard Norman calling me.
And I put out my hand where the voice came from, and he grabbed it.
She'd actually saved my life, really.
More water flowed down through Linmouth that night
than normally flows down to Thames in three months.
Of the tremendous din, you could even hear screams
of one family in particular, a whole family that went with their house.
I saw these two ladies, they were clinging onto a bridge in a sea of water.
I don't know if it's the life I've had at this time, but I most certainly have.
Unfortunately, they were washed down the river.
It won't hurt to say they were lost.
We'd look out the window, and all of a sudden we'd see these shafts of light.
Beams go up into the air and then sort of go murky and go out.
It was the cars being washed away, and it was where the lights,
the water made the contact for the lights for a short while,
and the headlights came on, and then eventually...
34 people died that night.
The youngest, a baby just 13 weeks old.
Flash floods are so destructive because rain is so heavy.
Flood water flowing at 20 miles per hour is not four,
but 16 times more powerful than water flowing at five miles per hour.
Flash floods kill hundreds every year.
Half of them in cars, they think, will save them.
Just two feet of water can rip a car from the road and send it swirling away.
Flash floods hit without warning,
for thunder clouds can make huge quantities of rain in a terrifyingly short time.
One hot July Saturday in 1976, these clouds grew to twice the height of normal clouds in less than one hour.
Then they dropped 10 inches of rain on the Big Thompson River Basin in Colorado.
Downstream, it wasn't even raining.
Even in winter, the Big Thompson is only a trickle.
But within its ice is locked the 20-year memory of a community and its sense of disbelief.
The sheriff had called me and said we had had reports that the Big Thompson River, they had some flooding up above.
And that kind of surprised me because I told him, I said, we were just at the river,
and it's this normal level, it's six inches deep and crystal clear.
So I got my flashlight and walked over the edge of the river and looked down at this little creek,
and all I saw was a torrent of water.
It looked like the waves crashing in the ocean. They were just huge.
And there was these propane tanks, and they were just like they were corks flipping down the river.
They had whistle and sing and gurgle and they would go underneath the water,
and all this was washing up and it was washing over against that part of the mountain there too
and slamming back up like a big, big wave coming back.
It wasn't water, it was like boiling lava. A car would appear in a bubble, come up to the surface with the lights on.
You would see people waving and flashing lights and windows rolled down and screaming for help.
And then the car would disappear in the next row of water.
The Nicholson family lived here, Barbara and Howard and five young children.
Howard took ten-year-old Christy to help an elderly neighbor, Mrs. Bailey.
This is how forceful the water was. Her dress, there was almost nothing left of her dress.
And so I remember going up to her and trying to pull down what little was left of her dress.
And this is what is just really weird because it's like I turned and turned back and they were gone. They were gone.
Their neighbors, Bob and Beverly Graham, only realized something was wrong when they saw a bridge come crashing past their house on a wave of water.
They hurried to get their two little girls to safety away from the river.
As we were going out the back door, another tremendous surge of water came by.
It's the surge that carried away my wife and daughters.
I barely made it to the house and I could no longer see any of my family.
I saw some boulders the size of trucks rolling in the water, end over end, and there was no stopping them.
I mean, they just continued to roll.
Pieces of houses, vehicles, cars and pickups, travel trailers washing by.
Some of the cars still had their lights on.
One or two of them I saw people in them trying to ride it out, but they were being tumbled about in these surges.
As the sun rose the following morning, the people of the canyon saw what the rain had done.
Four hundred and eighteen homes had been completely destroyed.
Fifty-two businesses had been wiped out.
Thirty-five and a half million dollars worth of damage had been done.
To give you an idea of the force of water that could emulsify a vehicle, that's what it did.
They would just find piles of twisted metal and not even be able to identify a vehicle.
As soon as it got light, the whole family walked down the highway, walked together to see if the house was still here.
And then when we saw that it wasn't, we just saw it.
That's the first time I've seen my father cry.
He just stood there, you know, devastated.
Among the dead, Bob Graham's wife Beverly and his two-year-old daughter Lisa.
And of his nine-year-old daughter, Teresa, no trace has ever been found.
As we grow up, we kind of take it for granted that our parents will get old and die before us,
but it is pretty uncommon for you to lose your children and to lose them very suddenly,
and that's the toughest thing to deal with.
And I've talked to other people who have done the same as I, and they too feel handicapped.
The only way I know how to describe it is you realize just how powerless a human is against the forces of Mother Nature
if she decides to do something this drastic.
And yes, you end up with a very deep respect for nature and its forces.
Heartworm disease can kill dogs, but there is a way to prevent heartworm disease that only has to be given once a month,
and it is made with real beef so it's chewable.
Preventing heartworm disease is easy for doggos and a delight for dogs, as you can see.
Chewing this monthly meaty treat sure beats the whole pill routine, and it sure beats heartworm.
Is your dog's heart guarded? Talk to your vet.
Get a McDonald's cheeseburger, small coke and small fries for only $2 after 5pm.
$2 for all this? Yeah, it's called a promotion, son.
The $2 Dinner at McDonald's.
Wouldn't it be more convenient to do your banking at a time and place that suits you?
There is a bank that has introduced Quickline, personal computer banking.
Which bank? The Commonwealth Bank, working for your future.
Sunsilk's new silk treatment shampoo and conditioner are enriched with silk proteins that penetrate and moisturize your hair,
leaving it beautifully soft and smooth.
And so silky, it shines.
Sunsilk, for hair so silky, it shines.
With two all-beef patties, delicious bacon, cheese, mustard, ketchup and onions, a double beef and bacon burger is twice as hard to resist.
Frouche!
Anytime's a good time to frouche.
The waiting is over. It's time for the main course. Welcome to Jurassic Park.
For the first time, the biggest motion picture ever.
Everyone will be watching Jurassic Park tonight on 7.
Captured live, John Farnham, the Jack of Hearts concert soon.
It's June, and in India, everyone is waiting for the monsoon rain.
Rain that will come not as a freak, but as proof of the climate's reliable rhythm.
Since March, the sun has moved north of the equator, and now it is scorching India.
With temperatures reaching 120 degrees, dozens have died from heatstroke.
At Victoria Terminus, Bombay's main railway station, the rush hour is about to begin.
Two and a half million rail commuters crowd into the city centre at the beginning of another sweltering day.
The packed trains are stiflingly hot. Temperatures outside are in the high 90s.
In these conditions, even busy commuters will stop to queue just for a drink of water.
Now it's scorching heat. It's very hot.
There is an anxiety in their hearts, in their eyes. They are looking towards the sky.
And this is a common topic everywhere, wherever you are talking to each other, oh, today is very hot.
Oh, the other man always will say, oh, the rains are going to come fast.
It is the sun's heat that will bring the rains. But this year, they are late, and people are beginning to wonder if they will fail.
Along Chowpatty Beach, anxious faces scan the sea for signs of rain.
The entire city is waiting for news that the monsoon has broken over Kerala, the southern tip of India.
Only then will it begin its steady progress northwards, bringing cooling rain to Bombay.
One woman has particular reason for worrying whenever the rains are late.
In the factory she runs, every window is thrown open to catch the slightest breeze.
For the workers of Ibrahim Karim and sons, this is the busiest time of year.
As they have done for 120 years, skillful fingers are snipping and stitching, assembling and testing umbrellas.
Ours is the oldest and leading and the largest umbrella business.
So we've been called Chhatriwala to the nation, the umbrella-walas to the nation.
There have been times when the rains have not come till the third week of June, and that's when we have really worried, you know.
Five million Bombayites await the monsoon with more mixed feelings. They will shelter from the rain in flimsy shanties like these.
This street is Jhula Maidan.
No fans or air conditioning here.
No running water either. Every precious bucket of water must be bagged or bought and carried home.
Every day the rains are delayed, obtaining water becomes more difficult for the shanty dwellers of Jhula Maidan.
But the monsoon will bring enormous problems too. Outside number 39, Samina and her mother-in-law sell homemade food from the handcart.
Just as the smouldering wood drives the flies from the food, so the monsoon will drive away their business.
Shanty, opposite to Gujran and Chhatriwhal, demand lev secondo par borrowed water Just this water.
Water is poured slowly once, retreat after retreat after one place.
The rain is falling and it's not going anywhere.
It's not going anywhere like it does in our community.
The rain stops.
For the forecasters too, these are tense days.
The northern limit of the rains is advancing, but how quickly?
Three times a day the telexes reveal the monsoon's progress.
In the scorched weather office garden, an observer dutifully checks the rain gauge.
But it requires information from around the world to forecast the monsoon.
The heat of Bombay is just one link in a weather chain that stretches from Brazil to Tibet.
The depth of snow in the Himalayas, the temperature of the monsoon,
and the temperature of the rain are all the same.
The depth of snow in the Himalayas, the temperature of the Pacific Ocean,
can both affect its behaviour.
But for the Bombayites, the only question is when?
I think it's within eight days.
Within four days the rain must come, because you yourself must be feeling
it has never been so hot as it is now.
It's not God's will that it rains.
If it had rained, it would have been a disaster.
What would have happened?
You don't know?
The monsoon has been called the world's biggest sea breeze.
The sun heats the air here so violently that it can rise more than 30,000 feet high.
Wet winds sweep in off the sea to fill the gap and spill their moisture as rain.
Bombay's fishermen see it first as high churning seas
dirtied by a wind blowing strongly from the southwest.
It's time to get the boats in.
There will be no more fishing until the sun, moving south again in September,
takes the rains back with it towards the equator.
Music
Heartworm disease can kill dogs, but there is a way to prevent heartworm disease
that only has to be given once a month, and it is made with real beef so it's chewable.
Preventing heartworm disease is easy for doggos and a delight for dogs, as you can see.
Chewing this monthly meaty treat sure beats the whole pill routine, and it sure beats heartworm.
Is your dog's heart guarded? Talk to your vet.
These days, many Australians find banking in normal hours just isn't convenient.
So we've introduced Quickline, personal computer banking that lets you bank at a time and a place that suits you.
Music
There is a bank that will continue to make banking more convenient for all Australians.
Which bank?
The Commonwealth Bank, working for your future.
We want Coca-Cola to make Christmas even more magical for your family,
so you can win a $5,000 toy spending spree at Santa's New York workshop.
He was thinking of having it here until...
They've got more toys than we do.
Really?
And I know how busy you all are.
Sure are. Santa was so excited about sending them to New York.
Yeah, he couldn't wait to tell us about his idea.
So why don't we send the winners to our New York workshop?
And I said, great idea, big guy!
Would you be happier if your family ate less fat?
Would you like to take some sugar out of their breakfasts?
As well as get rid of some salt from their diet?
Well, if you'd rather your family enjoyed good tasting nutrition and natural energy,
you really can't do better than Wheat Bits.
Real food from Sanitarium.
Can I have a half a meal, please?
It's a McDonald's Land Fun Ball Happy Meal with Ronald McDonald, Bertie, Grimace and Hamburglar.
Get one with your McDonald's Land Fun Ball Happy Meal.
That's a cheeseburger, small fries and a small coke. All for $2.95.
So get happy with the Happy Meal.
Watch Jurassic Park tonight on 7.
And your family could be flying to the U.S. to take the Jurassic Park ride.
And hurry home to your new explorer from Ford.
So intelligent it makes the others seem like dinosaurs.
Just make sure you're watching.
Wouldn't it be more convenient to do your banking at a time and place that suits you?
There is a bank that has introduced Quickline, personal computer banking.
Which bank?
The Combi Bank.
Working for your future.
Tonight.
The perfect Christmas.
It's tool time yuletide.
Mom?
Hey, you.
I think one of those babies just dropped the bomb.
And if something can go wrong, it always will.
On Home Improvement at 7.30.
Then on Third Rock at 8.
This is going to be the best weekend of my life.
That's what she thinks.
Oh, he's an idiot.
But one thing's for sure.
I shall return.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
But one thing's for sure.
Always with great love.
Isn't that great?
Third Rock, after Home Improvement, tonight on 7.
A whole continent waiting and praying for rain.
When, if it comes, the monsoon will be greeted with joy and celebrations.
But the complex weather chain that brings precious rain to India
can also bring misery.
Rain which is every bit as predictable,
but which is greeted with tears.
The broad Mississippi Valley catches the rain from 41 states.
When the river bursts its banks, there is nothing except homes in its way.
This is what remains of Valmire, a community rain destroyed.
For the people of the Mississippi Valley,
1993 was the year of the $12 billion flood.
15 million acres disappeared under flood water.
50 people died and 40,000 homes were destroyed.
Like the Indian monsoon, the flood's causes lay thousands of miles away.
Warmer than average water in the Pacific,
an exploding volcano in the Philippines,
exceptionally high pressure over Bermuda.
To the weathermen, the rain is a great blessing.
It was not even unexpected, but for the people of the valley,
it was devastating.
Time after time, generation after generation,
the floods that follow torrential rain have driven people here from their homes.
Despite millions spent on flood control,
the waters have returned to these communities again and again,
seven times in this century alone.
For everyone in Valmire, 1993 was the year that something uniquely precious was destroyed.
Half the families in the town were descended from the Mayas who settled here a century ago.
People like Audrey Reaver, her daughters Linda and Bobby.
To them, Valmire was so secure, so special that they never wanted to move away.
We had this tremendous extended family, if you can say that, for a village of 700.
We hadn't had a flood here since 1947,
so we had this sublime sense of security living on the flood plain,
living in this beautiful valley, not ever worrying about what the river was going to do.
Record rain for 122 days.
By mid-July, with a hundred rivers bursting their banks,
there was a state of emergency in nine states.
But even when Valmire was evacuated,
people refused to believe it could happen to them.
I felt the day we moved out of the house that we'd be back,
that we were just uprooting all our belongings, you know,
and we'd come back and just have to put everything back in place.
I just would never admit to myself that something that devastating could happen.
But during the night of August the 1st, the flood came.
Submerging farms and homes, coating everything with stinking mud,
spreading chemicals across fields and gardens and into homes.
It was two weeks before Bobbie could go back home for the first time.
I think I was in shock, I guess, walking through and seeing that there just was nothing left.
And I thought, God, how did my ancestors come back in and deal with this, you know?
This is where my family lived before the flood.
And we're standing in what used to be my dining room.
And it was yellow.
Because, I don't know, for some reason, that was kind of a favorite color of my grandmother and my dad.
And I made this room yellow.
The people here have lost everything that they associated with daily life.
Their post office, their gas station, their grocery store, their church, their school.
Most Valmier families, including Bobbie and her mother Audrey, weren't becoming back.
Their homes stand derelict, abandoned.
They have moved away to where the rain at the river can't get them.
I keep telling myself that I won't fall in love with the next house I live in.
And I don't think that I will.
But a lot of people feel, you know, that they don't want to fall in love with where they're at anymore.
Because it can be taken away from you.
You can't predict the force of nature.
Up until 93, I thought, you know, everything was cut and dried and you could control everything.
But that really made me realize that you don't have control over everything.
I'm not going.
I'm not going.
Today tonight, it will outrage all Australia.
What are the way I fit?
The Queensland town at war with its own people.
He's ripping off the rest of white Australians.
The worst case of atzik waste yet.
Plus the trap that's catching cheating husbands today tonight.
That boat's been sitting there for years.
He'll never sell it.
Okay, here's your receipt.
See ya.
Well, there's no way I'm having children.
Look at them.
Oh, no.
I'm not the man in comment.
All Suncorp home loans can change to suit your situation.
So wherever you're coming from,
you'll still make it home sooner.
The $2 dinner deal is now on at McDonald's.
Every day after 5pm, you get a cheeseburger,
small fries and a small coke.
So rush in now for your $2 dinner deal.
Only at McDonald's and only for a limited time.
McDonald's.
Would you be happier if your family ate less fat?
Would you like to take some sugar out of their breakfasts?
As well as get rid of some salt from their diet?
Well, if you'd rather your family enjoyed good tasting nutrition
and natural energy,
you really can't do better than Wheat Bits.
Real food from Sanitarium.
Real food from Sanitarium.
And now you might think a corgi like me would need a palace to live in.
Rubbish.
We poodles do need rather a lot of air dressing.
But I think you'll agree, it's worth it.
I don't like to be left alone, me.
So I'm right and good for older folks.
Jack as a ball, mate. Come on. Jack as a ball. Please. Come on. Come on. Come on.
Jack as a ball. Please. Please. Please. Come on.
We Jack Russells like a lot of exercise, don't we, Dad?
You speak for yourself, son.
Unfortunately, there's no matchmaking service for people and dogs.
Oh, shucks.
But now there's Select-A-Dog.
Select-A-Dog? Now what's that?
It's a totally free service from the Pet Care Information and Advisory Service.
You send in a questionnaire,
and we tell you which breeds of dog would suit you,
and how to find them.
For your copy, just call Pet Care on 1-800-064-400.
That's 1-800-064-400.
Thank you very much.
This is big. This is even bigger.
It's the OzLotto $5 million jackpot.
And OzLotto's average dividends are always incredibly big.
So get your entry in now.
Wouldn't it be nice to win $5 million this Tuesday?
Announcing another change.
The rate for new home loans is now 6.99% at Suncorp,
guaranteed for one year.
So you can spend that time making it home sooner.
You're watching Channel 7.
Coming up, the perfect Christmas, teen time style,
on Home Improvement, next, followed by Bird Rock.
In July, this may be the wettest city in the world.
In 1991, 35 inches of rain fell in Bombay in just two days.
And in Cherrapunji in the mountains, a world record.
90 feet of rain in one monsoon season.
The city has transformed.
The parched grounds where the students were playing cricket
and suddenly an emerald bog where a woman can cut grass for her cow.
At the weather office, they've at last got something to measure in the rain gauge.
Mumtaz Khorin, Chattrawala to the Indian nation, is finally doing good business.
The monsoon played true in this year.
We almost wondered whether the monsoons would come or not.
And I think I felt like a farmer looking at the sky,
wondering when it would thunder and when the clouds would gather and become dark.
We always bless grandfather-in-law for having thought of making umbrellas.
Because there'll always be rain and there'll always be umbrellas.
Other things may have changed, but the umbrella is pretty much the same.
In the shanty homes on Jhula Maidan,
a patchwork of plastic and timber is keeping the rain out for now.
Life here will get much more difficult during the three months of rain and mud and floods.
But in spite of this, Samina and her mother-in-law can't hide their relief
that at last the cooling rains have come.
The monsoon is so much more than just rainy days in Bombay.
Regular and predictable, it's the weather year's most dramatic piece of theatre,
when fire and rain come together to give new life to half the world.
But for Samina and all the people of Bombay, as for people everywhere,
it's how the weather affects their daily lives that concerns them.
We live our lives never thinking that our daily weather is just one small link
in a vast interconnected system that circles the globe.
Beautiful, destructive, without beginning or end,
and set in motion day by day by the power of the sun.
Next on Seven, an hour of hilarious comedy on home improvement and third rock from the sun.
Then at 8.30, prepare yourself for the biggest movie monster of all time.
For the first time on television, Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park.
8.30 tonight on Seven.
It's terrifying, isn't it? And there's plenty more where that came from.
As I mentioned, this is a four-part series called Savage Skies.
Next week, part two, looks at tornadoes, how they form and their incredible destructive power.
Here's a preview.
Of all the sky's family of clouds, the thunderhead is the most dangerous.
And when a thunderstorm rotates, it is more dangerous still.
Pulsing with electrical energy and with updrafts of a hundred miles an hour,
these so-called supercells have a deadly armory.
Lightning, hailstorms, and the terrifying beauty of a tornado.
Discolored by dirt sucked up from the ground, the tornado appears as a twisting umbilical rope
linking the earth to the sky.
Its progress seems slow, but the speed of the internal winds is certainly not.
At around 260 miles an hour, a tornado's vortex can lift a train from its tracks.
Those tornado pictures next week are the most graphic I have ever seen.
Make a note of it. Savage Skies looking at tornadoes.
Next Sunday at 6.30. That's it for now. Until news time tomorrow night, good night.
This program was proudly brought to you by Equal.
Hello, Frank Warwick. Christmas should be a joyous time.
Presents and the family together for dinner.
But some families genuinely can't afford it.
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And this year, Woolworths and Seven Nightly News ask you to do one simple but special thing.
Buy one of these $2 Christmas baubles from any Woolworths or Food for Less store.
And every dollar goes to the Smith family.
And we're happy to help too at Seven Nightly News.
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That's $1,000 direct from the factory to you.
The Holden Barina $1,000 factory cash back.
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Everyone's called me Seven.
Merry Christmas. It's your time here on Tool Time.
Merry Christmas. You know, Christmas always reminds me of my childhood.
I used to build a snowman every year.
I used to carrot for its nose, cookies for its eyes, and licorice for its smile.
Ha. That's a great story. Unfortunately, Al's mom usually ate the snowman.
One year, she used the carrot to make coleslaw.
Today's Tool Time isn't about a plaid lad's Christmas.
Today's Tool Time is about a man's Christmas.
And nothing says Christmas to a man like a block of ice and a Binford chainsaw.
That's right. And today's special Tool Time guest uses a chainsaw
to make beautiful ice sculptures.
That's right. Our guest, Chas Jensen, is here
to do the Plymouth International Ice Sculpting Spectacular.
So let's give him a warm...wait a minute.
Let's give him a cool Tool Time welcome. Chas Jensen.
Welcome to Tool Time, Chas. Thank you, Jim.
Chas. Thank you, Al.
Now, rumor has it that you can actually make a Christmas tree
out of this block of ice in 30 seconds.
Yes, I can. Would you like me to demonstrate?
We didn't invite you on the show to sing.
Well, cool.
Yeah!
You know, that is fabulous.
However, the presents you put under it should be waterproof.
Huh?
Oh, no. It's the Christmas lighting contest again.
Tim, I hope you're not going to go overboard this year.
You know, we could try a little subtlety for a change.
Got a cover.
Oh, Tim!
They're all out of the big ones.
Right.
Hey, no running in the house.
Ah, I have to go to the bathroom.
Hey, hurry up, Mark. Get out of there. I got to go really bad.
Why don't you go upstairs and use your bathroom?
I can't. Aunt Nancy's in there giving the babies a bath.
Well, then use ours.
Uncle Marty's in there and he took five magazines with him.
Go get some of those stick matches. Whoo!
Tim, will you please set the hut here up for lunch?
I'll just eat at the counter.
Oh, it's so great to have babies in the house again.
Yeah, there's nothing like a little projectile of vomit to brighten up the holidays.
Oh, come on.
Gosh, I think this is going to be the perfect Christmas.
You're not kidding. I think this year, finally, my decorations are going to beat Doc Johnson.
I was referring to your brother's family being here and my parents coming.
Don't set yourself up like this.
Every year your parents come, you end up locked in your bedroom going,
Why did I even invite them?
You know a present like your dad would give me?
Call me my name, Tim, instead of Hey You.
Well, if you heard what he calls you, behind your back you'd be happy with a Hey You.
Oh, they're here.
Mom, it's so wonderful to see you.
It's amazing you're seeing us at all.
Your father didn't use the turn signal once all the way from Texas.
Hello, dear.
Hello, Tim.
I didn't use the signal because there was no one behind me, Lillian.
Then what was that truck that almost sideswiped us?
He had no business being on the interstate, big truck like that.
Hi, Daddy.
Oh, sweetheart. Hey, you.
Here comes the truth.
Hello, give me some sugar.
All right, men, here's your mission.
There's a vehicle in the driveway that needs unloading.
Dismissed.
It's packed in a ceiling with presents.
Charge.
That's another thing. Your father piled the presents up so high in the back seat,
he couldn't even see out the window.
Now, don't blame me.
I wanted to put the presents in the front seat and you in the back.
Well, that would have certainly made things more pleasant for me.
Oh, it's going to be a perfect Christmas.
Would anybody like some eggnog?
Oh, no, your father can't eat eggs.
I can eat eggs. I just don't know what the hell nog is.
Oh, look, look.
You remember Tim's brother, Marty, and his wife, Lillian.
And this is Claire. And I think that's Gracie.
Oh, I think little angels.
Yeah, take a good look. They're clean.
We're clean. It only happens once a day.
You're thinking about a career. Think army.
All he ever talks about is the army, the army, the army.
You think he never retired.
Never should have retired.
After spending two days in the car with you, the Korean War was a picnic.
Well, I've really enjoyed my two days riding with you.
Of course, I could have had more scintillating conversation with a crash dummy.
You calling me a dummy?
Would you please just stop...
Jill.
Standing there so we can talk about Christmas lights?
Tim is entering a contest. Tell him, honey.
I'm entering a contest.