Making dust storms with Richard Hammond

A CRC for Water Sensitive Cities researcher helped create a massive dust storm for a Wild Weather episode featuring Top Gear host Richard Hammond, shown on SBS this week.

Program B Leader Professor Nigel Tapper and technician Darren Hocking joined the Wild Weather production team in November 2013 at Muloorina Station, Lake Eyre in outback South Australia. The segment involved developing a system to create a dust storm, then sampling the dust high in the atmosphere.

The episode, titled Temperature, The Driving Force, focused on host Richard Hammond’s look at the role temperature plays in weather and, by building his own dust storm, how sand from the Sahara is transported to the United Kingdom.

Prof Tapper said though there were potential environmental concerns from stirring up the dust, the station owner had resown the entire area with native grasses to revitalise the original arid landscape.

Wild Weather screens on Monday nights at 7.30pm and is available via BBC on demand: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04vr2p4