ANGRY PLANET
Presenter: George Kourounis
SERIES 1
Episode 1: Tornadoes
Ground Zero for host/adventurer George Kourounis when storm chasing, is Oklahoma City, capital of North America’s ´Tornado Alley´. George tracks a building storm that threatens that tough mid-western city, chases a hail storm, and fights to get in the middle of a vicious dust-devil while experiencing the funky roadside Americana of the American Midwest.
Episode 2: Desert Monsoon
Host/adventurer George Kourounis explores the American Southwest during the Desert Monsoon. He ups the danger factor by traveling with wild atheist shock-jock R.J. Evans to track massive lightning storms which can produce bolts of up to one hundred million volts. The pair come close - too close - to dangerous electrical clouds swirling over Tucson, Sedona and Monument Valley.
Episode 3: African Hellhole
The Angry Planet team heads to Africa to climb the steep and very active Nyiragongo Volcano in the Congo that erupted in 2002, sending 125,000 people fleeing for their lives. Host/adventurer George Kourounis explores the bubbling lake of molten lava and assesses the risk the dangerous volcano poses to both the people of the city of Goma and the Mountain Gorillas who live on the nearby jungle slopes.
Episode 4: Fire and Flood
With summer wildfires overpowering the Yukon forests, host/adventurer George Kourounis follows the fabled route of the Klondike Gold Rush. He sourdoughs through the bawdy town of Skagway, Alaska, paddling the white water rivers, and the White Horse Rapids into the Yukon. He travels on mountain bike, steam train and Cessna to experience the huge fires and meet the northern fire crews battling the blazes.
Episode 5: The Winds of Autumn
The autumn of 2006 brings hurricanes to the North Atlantic and hot dry winds fan forest fires across Northern Ontario. Host/adventurer George Kourounis has travelled through some awesome hurricanes, including Rita and Katrina, with his pal Mark Robinson. This year, they storm chase in Newfoundland, site of the hurricane that pulled Mark out of a life-threatening depression.
Episode 6: Wild Weather of 2005
2005 saw some of the wildest weather in the history of the planet. Host/adventurer George Kourounis tracks twisters through the Tornado Alley of Oklahoma and Texas, descends into the Erte Ale Volcano in the Danakil Depression of Ethiopia (the world’s hottest place), and then witnesses Hurricane Katrina destroying the town of Gulfport, Mississippi, from a steel-reinforced bunker facing the debris-strewn beachfront.
Episode 7: Volcanic Wedding
Host George Kourounis has braved many terrifying phenomena – but none as frightening as the one he takes on in this episode: marriage! To make sure his new bride is on the same adventurous page as him, he proposes to get married on the lip of an exploding volcano, on the South Pacific island of Tanna, in Vanuatu. Before the native preacher dressed in a grass skirt gets to perform the smoky vows, George descends into the erupting volcano to bring out red hot samples of the lava it is producing.
Episode 8: Wild Water
This episode looks at three explorations into the wild water that makes up over 70% of our angry planet. First, George travels to Guadaloupe Island off the coast of Mexico to dive with 16 foot Great White Sharks. He then uses a dry suit and kayak to retrace the explorations of Tom Woodward into a flooded Northern Ontario cave in the middle of winter, and finally jetboats into the world’s biggest Class VI whitewater rapids in the Niagara River.
Episode 9: Avalanche
There’s always the danger of avalanches in the Rogers Pass area of the Trans Canada Highway in British Columbia. Angry Planet host George Kourounis travels with a variety of experts to bring down huge avalanches in the Rocky Mountains. Ski Patrollers throw hand charges to clear the slopes, the British Columbia Department of Highways uses helicopter bombing and mountaintop mortars to keep the roads safe, and the Canadian Armed Forces fire 105mm howitzers at the mountains to bring down the dangerous snow. Still, there are accidents and fatalities in the mountains. We meet Francois Desroisers, an avalanche burial victim who tells a terrible tale of a mountain disaster.
Episode 10: Blizzard
Mount Washington, New Hampshire has the dubious title of being home to the world’s worst weather. The highest wind ever recorded on the planet – 233 miles per hour – was recorded at its mountaintop observatory. Angry Planet host George Kourounis and his sidekick Mark Robinson climb to the top of the mountain in mid-January and brave their way into a blizzard at the summit. They also experience whiteouts and furious winter weather on the icy roads of Canada, then George heads west to try his hand at ice-climbing in the Canadian Rockies.
Episode 11: Fin del Mundo
Some of the fiercest weather on the planet can be experienced at the southern tip of Argentina and Chile– the area the South Americans call the “Fin del Mundo” – the End of the World. Host George Kourounis travels to Ushuaia, Argentina, then sails south on the expedition sailboat “Northanger” to round infamous Cape Horn, then climbs the spectacular but rapidly melting glaciers along the Beagle Channel.
Episode 12: Boiling Lake
Dominica, the most volcanic and mountainous island in the Caribbean, is home to the Boiling Lake, a large waterfall-fed lake of furiously boiling water. Adventurer George Kourounis becomes the first person ever to traverse the lake on a rope, risking his life to take water samples and shoot video from a place no human has ever been. He then descends to the ocean floor off the coast of the island to explore vents where the superheated water bubbles into the ocean.
Episode 13: Tornadoes ’07
George Kourounis returns to “Tornado Alley” with three of his fellow storm chasers to see what the 2007 Storm Season will bring. He gets a birthday gift of a large Kansas tornado, then travels to Missouri to witness a string of violent thunderstorms. Heading west to Crazy Horse Mountain, the team is in place for a huge storm sweeping through the Badlands of South Dakota.