Weathering the storm:

Dan Corbett shares some wild weather moments.

East Coast Blizzard, New York, 1993

I was working in New York, doing forecasting for radio stations and also for pilots. We were forecasting a big low to just dump snow. I remember we had to sleep at work because all the roads were closed. We ended up getting about two feet of snow. All the airports were closed and I remember we ended up with sleeping bags and loads of food. We were camping in the office because you’re doing all the forecasting and then it’s like, ‘OK, your shift is over’, but you can’t go anywhere. It took days to get things back to normal. It was absolutely astonishing to watch the snow as it was coming down and dumping like crazy, along with the wind blowing it all about. With a snowstorm it’s almost like a weatherman’s version of Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, when all the kids come running downstairs for the presents. Even though you can’t drive around, it’s still amazing to see and you wake up and you go, ‘Wow, the road is all gone’.

The Jarrell Tornado, Texas, 1997

I was working at a TV station in Texas. We had five tornadoes that day. And one particular one, the Jarrell Tornado, was one of the biggest they’d had in the States at that time. A tornado dropped out of a thunderstorm. It was absolutely massive. It was a mile wide. When it dropped out it just pretty much took everything in his path. And, you know, we were warning for it. There were 28 people who died. I remember the day after, because obviously you’re going down there to the actual town, and driving over this lovely green valley,

going over a hill and all of a sudden getting to the edge of the road. You just saw this long brown strip. It was about five miles long and a mile wide, and it pretty much had sucked all the ground. It even sucked the asphalt, all the houses, everything – trees, absolutely gone.

Arizona Wildfire/Dust Storm, 2003

I was working in Tucson, Arizona at a TV station. There was a wildfire in the mountains just outside the city and it was burning towards the city and threatening neighbourhoods and some of the villages. We went up there, on the edge of the fire, covering it. I remember one day, the thunderstorm went up, the cloud goes up, and then the storm collapses really quickly. And it sends out this gust, this outflow as we call it, and that picked up some of the dust because, of course, there had been all this smoke of recent days. We were standing out there and then all of a sudden, before you know it, you can’t see anything. It just turned day into night. That was pretty scary.

The Severn Floods, UK, 2007

It was the middle of summer and I was working at the BBC doing the six o’clock news. I was talking about the low that was going to come and just sit and dump rain. It just sat and spun around like a corkscrew and it dumped loads and loads of rain over the West Country and much of Wales. It dumped well over a month’s worth of rain. Then the rivers were bursting their banks to the point where some the towns along the Severn River were completely inundated with water. So I think the day or two after, as the news crews went out, I went out there along with the six o’clock news presenter. We stood knee-to-waist deep in the water and presented the evening news and weather from what was the Severn River on the side of the town. In some places they say, ‘Don’t stand in the water’. They’re always worrying about snakes or alligators. But in the UK we didn’t really have that much of a problem.

The Antarctic cold, 2015

In early December 2015, I went to Antarctica (above) for 1 News and we did the weather down there for a week. The temperature was about minus 30. When you’re outside and the wind is blowing, it just makes presenting the weather a whole other thing. You’re trying to hold bits of paper and if, for one second, you take your glove off, your hand just becomes sort of numb. It was challenging to say the least but every night we were out there. We didn’t get blasted with a blizzard but we did have some strong wind chills.