Australian thunderstorm sucks up paragliders

[Oscar van der Velde]

I've read such stories before, but every one of them is amazing to read. Here is a new story. Terrifying

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/dead-luck-ewas-flight-of-fury/2007/02/16/1171405421626.html

Oscar

 

[Mike Peregrine]

This is the first I've heard of such a thing. It's on MSNBC's homepage as well. Evidently the updraft pulled her up to 32,000 ft. How could a person even survive such rapid decompression? (Another man wasn't as fortunate, looks like.)

The altitude was enough to encase her in ice. It's amazing she survived. She mentioned that she was surrounded in hail the size of oranges and could hear lightning all around her. Talk about your ultimate chase ... I wonder who the first person will be to actually try this intentionally.

 

[david diehl]

Wow is all that I can say.
I have heard of other bodies being found encased in ice from the same thing, but the last that I remember that was back in 1920's
To hear of something like this happening in my lifetime, and the person surviving it is amazing.

 

[jladue]

I talked with with a counterpart of mine at the BOM fellow chaser Harald Richter. He described the thunderstorms to be typical weakly sheared convection strong enough to produce some heavy rain and a downburst. He's archiving the nearest radar data but right now Ewa's incredible ride probably didn't include orange sized hail. I doubt I'd do any better in maintaining scientific rationality if I were in her place. I don't know if I'd be alive to even provide an exaggeration of hail size. What a lucky experience she had!

 

[Michael Thompson]

I am going to play Devil's Advocate here and say that the organisers and competitors ( it was a practice day ) of the event should have known better. At the level of experience we are talking - world championship, I am sure you should know a developing thunderstorms when you see them. Storms on this day were not a 'surprise' and were firmly in the forecast.

I witnessed a related mind numbing event a few years back on a storm chase. It was a typical western Sydney storm, formed over the Blue Mountains, drifted east and weakened. However the Bureau had had a severe storm warning out, probably not needed, but with near 100F in western Sydney dry microbursts could still occur even from half dead convection. I pulled up to a favourite lookout, very dissapointed with storm, when lo and behold dropping from right under the anvil comes about 20 people from the local sky diving school. They were perfectly safe, but the point is I knew this as a chaser, but based on the current knowledge all the school would have known is that a severe storm warning was current !

I am not a wowser that belives all sport with danger should be controlled. If you want to surf 30ft Hawaiin waves, so be it. It you want to ski dangerous ski slopes , fine. These are the very vechiles to enhancing the 'thrill' - but a thunderstorm for paragliding is a 'thrill '.

 

[Darren Addy]

The story is incredible. But I was struck by the fact that a paraglider could be sucked into the inflow of a storm, record data, and come out of it in one piece. Her analogy of a "leaf" is, perhaps, a good one.

Has anyone ever considered flying drone "radio-controlled" paragliders (with instrumentation) into storms for research purposes? It seems like a lot of incredible data could be available in there, with the right instrumentation was onboard.

Sounds like a great research project, eh? ("Paging Tim Samaras!")

 

[Joey Ketcham]

I am going to play Devil's Advocate here and say that the organisers and competitors ( it was a practice day ) of the event should have known better. At the level of experience we are talking - world championship, I am sure you should know a developing thunderstorms when you see them. Storms on this day were not a 'surprise' and were firmly in the forecast.

From my understanding she was just out doing some practice runs on her own, it could be my lack of knowledge about paragliding championship but if she was just doing some practice runs during her own time then I can't see myself saying that they should have known better.

It would be like me competiting in the PGA, and days before I go out to the local golf course to practice and I get struck by lightning.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

The story is incredible. But I was struck by the fact that a paraglider could be sucked into the inflow of a storm, record data, and come out of it in one piece. Her analogy of a "leaf" is, perhaps, a good one.

Has anyone ever considered flying drone "radio-controlled" paragliders (with instrumentation) into storms for research purposes? It seems like a lot of incredible data could be available in there, with the right instrumentation was onboard.

Sounds like a great research project, eh? ("Paging Tim Samaras!")

Hmm.. that's an interesting idea, Darren. I've always wondered though how you could boost the signal of wireless transmitters to make it reach back to your location to record it on the computer.

 

[Darren Addy]

Hmm.. that's an interesting idea, Darren. I've always wondered though how you could boost the signal of wireless transmitters to make it reach back to your location to record it on the computer.

I would imagine instrumentation that was more or less a "black box" (recovered after being ejected by the storm) that would be in record-mode from the moment of release (and have a locator device on it - similar to a GPS-enabled cell phone - to aid in recovery). I would imagine that the drone would not always survive, but the black box survivability would be the issue.

The benefit of the paraglider is that it has close to "neutral buoyancy" (it will go up or down - whereever the storm winds take it.) The engine would need to be cut as soon as it was detected that the the paraglider had passed the storm's "event horizon" and was being pulled in.

 

[Morgan Palmer]

Regarding the possible research use of these type of vehicles, it seems to me that one would, to get an acceptable risk vs. reward, a very heavy-duty -- almost hardened -- parasail/wing.

When the paraglider mentioned feeling like a leaf, I thought that, of course, it would be as such. With such intense updrafts and hail, I am surprised the sail stayed intact.

I wonder, if the same act were repeated a hundred times, if in 90 out of 100, the sail might collapse. Is that what happened to the unfortunate glider who died? Or was his craft found intact, with him only succumbing to hypoxia and/or temperature?

add: of course, strengthening the craft would likely add an unacceptable amount of weight, preventing travel to very high altitudes, IMO

 

[Joey Ketcham]

That would be interesting to see someone attempt at doing something like that, Darren. If I had the knowledge and funds to do such a project, I think it would be interesting to try.

 

[Eddie Natenberg]

I remember there being a weatherwise article about some air force pilots accidentally parachuting into a severe thunderstorm.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3585/is_199710/ai_n8535472

hmmmm..... I'd rather let instrumentation have the fun ride in an updraft.

 

[Darren Addy]

Thanks for the reference. Here's the
printable full text.

 

[tom hanlon]

Regarding the possible research use of these type of vehicles, it seems to me that one would, to get an acceptable risk vs. reward, a very heavy-duty -- almost hardened -- parasail/wing.


add: of course, strengthening the craft would likely add an unacceptable amount of weight, preventing travel to very high altitudes, IMO

I disagree...
If a Hailstone can get up there.. then a wing with a moderately decent fall/glide ratio , once caught in the updraft, would go right on up. These things could be pretty small.

--
Tom

 

[Darren Addy]

I'm probably in sci-fi-land here, but I'm thinking that if a a paraglider can be "like a leaf" inside the meso, then it would (hopefully) get into the place where the hail is formed. It would essentially be traveling up and down with the hail as it gets layers of ice added onto it. It would seem to me that as long as the paraglider "chute/wing" did not become encased in ice it would continue to function well inside the storm. Paraglider fabrics can be kevlar, and I'm guessing that would be the best material for taking inside a hail environment. Dreaming here, but would it be possible to design a functional "chute/wing" that would be kevlar, containing a mesh of Nichrome wire that would keep it warm enough to stay de-iced? The engine could kick in a generator to provide the necessary juice (while disengaging the prop so it would be free to follow the forces of the updraft).

What say we get a National Science Foundation grant and build one of these puppies?