'NOVA: Killer Hurricanes'
(DVD / PG / 2018 / PBS)
Overview: 'Killer Hurricanes' pursues the riddle of an 18th century Caribbean superstorm that killed 20,000, the highest known death toll of any single weather event. To reconstruct its epic scale and investigate what made it so devastating, NOVA joins historians and storm sleuths as they track down clues in eyewitness chronicles, old ruins, and computer simulations.
DVD Verdict: Directed and Produced by Oliver Twinch and Paul Williams, Narrated by Craig Sechler, 'Nova: Killer Hurricanes' is one of the most dynamically shot documentaries that I think I've ever seen!
Focusing on The Great Hurricane of 1780 - which took nine days to blast its way across the Caribbean, killing at least 20,000 = the highest known death toll of any single weather event in history - it asks the question: What made this superstorm so deadly?
To reconstruct its epic scale and investigate what made it so devastating, NOVA joins historians and storm sleuths as they track down clues in eyewitness chronicles, old ruins, and computer simulations.
Their evidence points to a truly terrifying, 300-mile-wide storm - with wind speeds probably exceeding 230 miles an hour and 25-feet storm surges that demolished everything in their path.
But just how unusual was the Great Hurricane? Diving into sinkholes off Barbados and squirming into caves in the Yucatan, NOVA's experts recover traces of tempests stretching back over more than 1,000 years.
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