Watch Wild Weather

All weather, even the everyday stuff, is riddled with mystery and wonder, though you may not think so when caught without an umbrella. Find out how weather happens when the forces of wind, water and temperature collide, combine and even occasionally cooperate.

In this episode, Richard Hammond investigates how temperature - or lack of it - drives all our weather: he starts a dust storm in Australia, lights a giant hotplate in a quarry in the UK and creates an ice storm in Canada. Oh, and he drops in on a lab where they create lightning bolts!

Without water there would be almost no weather: no rain, no snow, no hail, no clouds. So Richard Hammond goes in pursuit of water in all its forms. He tries to weigh a cloud; find out how rain could crush a car; gets involved in starting an avalanche, and tracks a snowflake traveling at 250 mph.

In this episode Richard investigates how wind actually starts: he visits one of the windiest places on the planet; walks into the center of a man-made tornado; and creates a 10-metre high whirlwind... made of fire!