Storm Chasing
Kourounis has been a storm chaser since 1997 and documents all forms of severe weather including tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, floods, hail and lightning.
In January 2005, George brought his camera to the remote Danakil Depression in the harsh Ethiopian desert and was lowered 60 feet into the smoking crater of the active Erta Ale volcano. He spent a half hour filming on top of the freshly hardened surface of the lava lake wearing a protective heat suit.
This made him the first person to have ever filmed from the inside of three of the world’s most fearsome forces – a tornado, the eye of a hurricane, and an active volcano. He was able to intercept all four of the major U.S. land falling hurricanes in 2005, including devastating Hurricane Katrina in Gulfport, Mississippi. While he filmed the storm, the city around him was disintegrating in the incredible winds.
Some of his other accomplishments include documenting mountain gorillas in Rwanda, climbing Mount Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and documenting numerous destructive tornadoes across the United States. He has also filmed forest fires, floods, lightning, and great white sharks. In 2006, he and his wife Michelle were married on the crater’s edge of the erupting Yasur volcano on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. The ceremony was documented for his television series Angry Planet.
Read more about this topic: George Kourounis
Famous quotes containing the words storm and/or chasing:
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail—its roof may shake—the wind may blow through it—the storm may enter—the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter!—all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!”
—William Pitt, The Elder, Lord Chatham (1708–1778)
“Put in hours and hours of planning, figure everything down to the last detail, then what? Burglar alarms start going off all over the place for no sensible reason. A gun fires of its own accord and a man is shot. And a broken-down old house no good for anything but chasing kids has to trip over us. Blind accidents. What can you do against blind accidents?”
—Ben Maddow (1909–1992)