The Weather

The rain is an essential part of being British, giving us the English lawn, the sliding tackle and endless grounds for complaint, but what do we really know about rain? The programme uncovers the true shape of a raindrop, shows how and why rain falls and tells remarkable stories of how we have adapted or succumbed to this elemental force of nature, such as James Glaisher's seven-mile hot air balloon ascent in 1862 and how Charles Macintosh invented the waterproof coat. The Victorians believed that they could master the rain and push it aside, but today climate change threatens us with rain that is wilder and more unpredictable than ever.

This episode looks at snow, that most fleeting and beautiful of elements which endlessly fascinates us. Using rare footage we journey into the microscopically small world of the snow crystal, finding out how a snowflake forms and why it is always six-sided. The science of snow tests British Rail's claim that the snow that crippled their rolling stock in 1991 really was the 'wrong type of snow', and explains how a British company is the world's biggest producer of snow.

This episode looks at wind - a phenomenon caused by the interaction of temperature, pressure and the earth's rotation, which took scientists over a thousand years to fully explain. We witness some remarkable wind-related stories, such as the tornado that flung Dorothy Allwright and her caravan into the air, and how Scottish engineer James Blyth invented the first electricity-producing wind turbine in 1887. Once we looked to the gods to explain the wind, until science unlocked its mysteries. Today, we may have come to understand the wind, but we have also realised that we will never master it, and that this elemental force cannot be ignored.