Superstorm (docudrama)
Encyclopedia
Superstorm is a three-part British docudrama
miniseries
written and directed by Julian Simpson
, about a group of scientists that try to divert and weaken hurricanes using cloud seeding
.
Superstorm originally aired on BBC One
for a period of three weeks, totaling three 59 minute episodes, from to . Each episode was followed by a half-hour documentary on BBC Two
on extreme weather monitoring and forecasting, called The Science of Superstorms. The series was also aired (after being edited for content) on the Discovery Channel
in the U.S. and Canada during the summer of 2007.
Superstorm is a co-production of BBC Worldwide
, Discovery Channel
and ProSieben, in association with M6 and NHK
. Ailsa Orr and Michael Mosley, who made also Supervolcano, are the executive producers for BBC, while Jack E. Smith is the executive producer for Discovery Channel.
The miniseries was released on DVD in the United Kingdom on July 2, 2007.
Hurricane Grace, a Category 3 hurricane which is slowly climbing to a Category 5, is up to hit the United States. Using a predictive technology named Tempest and developed by Lance Resznick, they are able to simulate the effects of seeding the storm in order to collapse the eye of the storm
and then decrease its intensity.
Lance is openly skeptical towards the theories of Sara Hughes, an English scientist who is convinced about the effectiveness of cloud seeding. An experiment is done on a smaller hurricane, Agatha. A plane and several UAV
carrying the seeds (in this case, supercooled liquid) fly into the storm. At first, the experiment is a success but then the storm intensifies during the seeding and the plane crashes.
Weeks go by and Grace has now become a category 5 hurricane, headed straight for Miami. At the urgings of Katzenberg, the fund seeker of the project, the team formulates a plan of distant atmospheric perturbation to deflect Grace out into the Atlantic Ocean
by creating a low pressure system on the Pacific
coast and allowing it to be carried across the nation towards the hurricane.
While the team leader Abrams and mathematician Munish Loomba try to model the weather perturbation that will safely deflect Grace, Lance tells Sara that her attempt to change Agatha's course after the seeding was actually successful. Discussing such results with her grandfather, who was head of a similar, discredited project in the 1970s, Sara discovers that he and his team knew they could make hurricanes change course but made their efforts appear fruitless because they realized the military were behind the project, looking for ways to use weather as a weapon. The same turns out to be true for Stormshield, even if Katzenberg had previously assured that there was no military involvement.
Meanwhile the low pressure system approach has been finalized, with B-52 bombers ready to release trails of carbon over the West Coast. Just before proceeding with the operation, Lance states that the attempt must be stopped as another storm is moving up and could deflect Grace back into the USA. Unimpressed, Katzenberg fires the whole team, who refuses to take such a high risk.
The team soon learns that the operation went on even if they did not provide the necessary data to the flying squad. The mole in the team turns out to be Bengal
i-born Munish, who lost his family in a hurricane while still a child and now desperate to make the theory of hurricane deflection work.
The other storm did deflect Grace, now headed right for New York City
. After realizing that in the first experiment the course of Agatha was altered by the supercooling of the areas of the storm, the team decides to apply the same method. They manage to slightly deviate the storm away from New York City, thus causing smaller damage, but cannot avoid that Long Island
, where the Stormshield headquarters are located, is hit.
Sara is the only member of the team who survives without severe injuries and the series finishes with her about to either admit the terrible tragedy caused by their research or, as Katzenberg would want, lie to cover it up and suggest to the American people and
to the whole world that the technology did work and is to be expanded.
Docudrama
In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....
miniseries
Miniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
written and directed by Julian Simpson
Julian Simpson
Julian Simpson is a London-based writer and director working in film, TV and radio. He was educated at Felsted School.His credits include The Criminal, Superstorm, Murder Prevention, Spooks, New Tricks, Hustle and Doctor Who....
, about a group of scientists that try to divert and weaken hurricanes using cloud seeding
Cloud seeding
Cloud seeding, a form of intentional weather modification, is the attempt to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds, by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei, which alter the microphysical processes within the cloud...
.
Superstorm originally aired on BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
for a period of three weeks, totaling three 59 minute episodes, from to . Each episode was followed by a half-hour documentary on BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
on extreme weather monitoring and forecasting, called The Science of Superstorms. The series was also aired (after being edited for content) on the Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
in the U.S. and Canada during the summer of 2007.
Superstorm is a co-production of BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide Limited is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in 1995. In the year to 31 March 2010 it made a profit of £145m on a turnover of £1.074bn. The company had made a profit of £106m...
, Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
and ProSieben, in association with M6 and NHK
NHK
NHK is Japan's national public broadcasting organization. NHK, which has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, is a publicly owned corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee....
. Ailsa Orr and Michael Mosley, who made also Supervolcano, are the executive producers for BBC, while Jack E. Smith is the executive producer for Discovery Channel.
The miniseries was released on DVD in the United Kingdom on July 2, 2007.
Plot
The movie begins with a team of scientists working on a US government project, known as Stormshield, whose goal is to control and manage storms, particularly hurricanes.Hurricane Grace, a Category 3 hurricane which is slowly climbing to a Category 5, is up to hit the United States. Using a predictive technology named Tempest and developed by Lance Resznick, they are able to simulate the effects of seeding the storm in order to collapse the eye of the storm
Eye (cyclone)
The eye is a region of mostly calm weather found at the center of strong tropical cyclones. The eye of a storm is a roughly circular area and typically 30–65 km in diameter. It is surrounded by the eyewall, a ring of towering thunderstorms where the second most severe weather of a cyclone...
and then decrease its intensity.
Lance is openly skeptical towards the theories of Sara Hughes, an English scientist who is convinced about the effectiveness of cloud seeding. An experiment is done on a smaller hurricane, Agatha. A plane and several UAV
Unmanned aerial vehicle
An unmanned aerial vehicle , also known as a unmanned aircraft system , remotely piloted aircraft or unmanned aircraft, is a machine which functions either by the remote control of a navigator or pilot or autonomously, that is, as a self-directing entity...
carrying the seeds (in this case, supercooled liquid) fly into the storm. At first, the experiment is a success but then the storm intensifies during the seeding and the plane crashes.
Weeks go by and Grace has now become a category 5 hurricane, headed straight for Miami. At the urgings of Katzenberg, the fund seeker of the project, the team formulates a plan of distant atmospheric perturbation to deflect Grace out into the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
by creating a low pressure system on the Pacific
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
coast and allowing it to be carried across the nation towards the hurricane.
While the team leader Abrams and mathematician Munish Loomba try to model the weather perturbation that will safely deflect Grace, Lance tells Sara that her attempt to change Agatha's course after the seeding was actually successful. Discussing such results with her grandfather, who was head of a similar, discredited project in the 1970s, Sara discovers that he and his team knew they could make hurricanes change course but made their efforts appear fruitless because they realized the military were behind the project, looking for ways to use weather as a weapon. The same turns out to be true for Stormshield, even if Katzenberg had previously assured that there was no military involvement.
Meanwhile the low pressure system approach has been finalized, with B-52 bombers ready to release trails of carbon over the West Coast. Just before proceeding with the operation, Lance states that the attempt must be stopped as another storm is moving up and could deflect Grace back into the USA. Unimpressed, Katzenberg fires the whole team, who refuses to take such a high risk.
The team soon learns that the operation went on even if they did not provide the necessary data to the flying squad. The mole in the team turns out to be Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
i-born Munish, who lost his family in a hurricane while still a child and now desperate to make the theory of hurricane deflection work.
The other storm did deflect Grace, now headed right for New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. After realizing that in the first experiment the course of Agatha was altered by the supercooling of the areas of the storm, the team decides to apply the same method. They manage to slightly deviate the storm away from New York City, thus causing smaller damage, but cannot avoid that Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, where the Stormshield headquarters are located, is hit.
Sara is the only member of the team who survives without severe injuries and the series finishes with her about to either admit the terrible tragedy caused by their research or, as Katzenberg would want, lie to cover it up and suggest to the American people and
to the whole world that the technology did work and is to be expanded.
Cast
- Nicola StephensonNicola StephensonNicola Stephenson is an English actress. She is known mainly for her roles in television, which include Margaret Clemence in Brookside, Julie Fitzjohn/Bradford in Holby City, Suzie Davidson in Clocking Off, Jackie in ITV's Christmas Lights/Northern Lights/City Lights, and Sarah Williams in BBC's...
as Sara Hughes - Tom SizemoreTom SizemoreThomas Edward "Tom" Sizemore, Jr. is an American film and television actor and producer. He is known for his roles in films such as Saving Private Ryan, Strange Days, Pearl Harbor, Heat and Black Hawk Down....
as Katzenberg - Chris PotterChris Potter (actor)Christopher Jay "Chris" Potter is a Canadian actor, musician and pitchman. He is primarily known for his roles on soap operas and prime-time television. Potter is known for his roles as Peter Caine, on the popular 1990s crime drama, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Dr...
as Dan Abrams - JR Bourne as Lance Resnick
- Cas Anvar as Munish Loomba
- Nicolas WrightNicolas WrightNicolas Wright is a Canadian actor. Wright has performed on stage, television and film. In 2004, he received the "most promising newcomer" award at the Just for Laughs film festival in Montreal for his short film, Toutouffe...
as Ralf DeWitt - Emily TilsonEmily TilsonEmily Tilson is a film and television actress. She currently attends Royal West Academy in Montreal West, and is in grade eight.-Career:She appeared as Hannah McConnell in two 2005 episodes of the mockumentary television series The Tournament...
as Emily Abrams - Jana CarpenterJana CarpenterJana Carpenter is a British actress, singer and guitarist. She has appeared in a few TV series episodes and films and is also vocalist and guitarist in the countryfolk/harmony band Piefinger, and Mercury Prize nominated experimental rock band Sweet Billy Pilgrim.-Filmography:-External links:...
as Holly Zabrieski
See also
- Supervolcano, a 2005 docudrama by the same producers
- Super stormSuper stormA super storm is a subjective term for any storm which is extremely and unusually destructive. The term is often used to describe the 1993 Storm of the Century, which impacted much of eastern North America with varying degrees of destructive weather....
- Global warmingGlobal warmingGlobal warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
- Cloud seedingCloud seedingCloud seeding, a form of intentional weather modification, is the attempt to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds, by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei, which alter the microphysical processes within the cloud...