George Kourounis

Last updated
George Kourounis
George Kourounis.jpg
Born (1970-05-22) 22 May 1970 (age 54)
Hull, Quebec, Canada
Occupation(s)professional adventurer,
storm chaser,
motivational speaker,
television presenter [1]
Website Stormchaser.ca

George Kourounis (born 22 May 1970), is a Greek-Canadian adventurer and storm chaser who specializes in documenting extreme weather and worldwide natural disasters. He presents the television series Angry Planet .

Contents

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 Kourounis brought his camera to the remote Danakil Depression in the harsh Ethiopian desert and was lowered 60 ft (18 m) 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. [2]

He documented four major U.S. land falling hurricanes in 2005, including the devastating Hurricane Katrina in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Other Accomplishments

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 and great white sharks. In 2006 he and his wife Michelle were married on the crater’s edge of the erupting Mount Yasur volcano on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. The ceremony was documented for his television series Angry Planet. [3] On 6 November 2013 he was the first person to enter the Darvanza Crater in Turkmenistan (a burning natural gas field known as the "Gates of Hell"). [4]

Kourounis does stints as a tour guide for Cloud 9 Tours with owner Charles Edwards. Other guides include Jim Leonard and Mike Theiss.[ citation needed ]

Television

Kourounis entered television work with numerous appearances in weather documentary programs featuring severe weather and natural disasters. Kourounis has been a guest on television programs, including CTV Newsnet, CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 , BBC-TV, and Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet . [5]

Angry Planet

Kourounis co-created and hosts a television series titled Angry Planet for OLN in Canada, The Travel Channel worldwide, and The Weather Channel in Australia.

The series features Kourounis traveling to dangerous or remote locations and examining various extreme forces of nature, typically at close range. The series premiered in March 2007 and 39 episodes were produced. [6]

The show has featured Kourounis participating in such adventures as tornado chasing, rappelling into erupting volcanoes, driving into the eye of hurricanes, enduring extremes of heat and cold and boating on a lake of sulfuric acid at Ijen in Indonesia. Kourounis often teams up with scientists or local experts who assist in the adventures. Filming has taken place on all seven continents.

Kourounis was nominated for Gemini awards in 2008 and 2009 for his work hosting Angry Planet.[ citation needed ]

Storm Hunters

Kourounis co-hosted and was the director of photography on three episodes of the television series Storm Hunters which was produced for The Canadian Weather Network. The series chronicled the adventures of Kourounis and Weather Network meteorologist Mark Robinson as the duo traveled across Canada documenting winter weather. [7]

The East Coast episode was filmed on location in Nova Scotia, including Peggys Cove and the Cape Breton Highlands, along the Cabot Trail.

The Western episode showcased avalanche control crews that work in the mountain ranges of British Columbia, bringing down unstable snow using explosives. The pair also experienced extreme temperatures of -110 degrees Celsius (-166F) inside a specially designed cold sauna. This was lower than the coldest temperature ever recorded anywhere on Earth.[ citation needed ]

The Arctic episode involved a road trip to north of the Arctic Circle, through the Yukon Territory and along the Dempster Highway in mid-winter to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories where they then took to the ice roads and eventually made it to the northernmost point in Canada that can be driven to. The last section of the ice road was on the frozen Beaufort Sea. The journey ended in the small village of Tuktoyaktuk.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Storm chasing</span> Pursuit of any severe weather condition

Storm chasing is broadly defined as the deliberate pursuit of any severe weather phenomenon, regardless of motive, but most commonly for curiosity, adventure, scientific investigation, or for news or media coverage. A person who chases storms is known as a storm chaser or simply a chaser.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ijen</span> Volcano complex in East Java, Indonesia

The Ijen volcano complex is a group of composite volcanoes located on the border between Banyuwangi Regency and Bondowoso Regency of East Java, Indonesia. It is known for its blue fire, acidic crater lake, and labour-intensive sulfur mining.

<i>Storm Stories</i> American documentary television program

Storm Stories is an American non-fiction television series that airs on The Weather Channel (TWC) and Zone Reality. It is hosted and narrated by meteorologist and storm tracker Jim Cantore. Storm Stories showcases various types of severe weather, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, rain, floods, etc. Each episode features a famous severe storm, and survivors of it sharing their experiences. The program also features footage of the storm if it is available, but typically a re-enactment is used instead. The video of the storm is often shown while the survivors offer their accounts of it. Often, TWC would air a special week dedicated to one specific type of storm.

Angry Planet is a 39-part television series broadcast around the world featuring the adventures of storm chaser George Kourounis. Angry Planet is produced by Peter Rowe of Pinewood Films. The series plays on the following networks:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doppler on Wheels</span> Fleet of X-band radar trucks maintained by the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR)

Doppler on Wheels is a fleet of X-band and C-band mobile and quickly-deployable truck-borne radars which are the core instrumentation of the Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets affiliated with the University of Illinois and led by Joshua Wurman, with the funding partially provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF), as part of the "Community Instruments and Facilities," (CIF) program. The DOW fleet and its associated Mobile Mesonets and deployable weather stations have been used throughout the United States since 1995, as well as occasionally in Europe and Southern America. The Doppler on Wheels network has deployed itself through hazardous and challenging weather to gather data and information that may be missed by conventional stationary radar systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua Wurman</span> American meteorologist

Joshua Michael Aaron Ryder Wurman is an American atmospheric scientist and inventor noted for tornado, tropical cyclone, and weather radar research, the invention of DOW and bistatic radar multiple-Doppler networks.

<i>Storm Chasers</i> (TV series) American documentary television series

Storm Chasers is an American documentary reality television series that premiered on October 17, 2007, on the Discovery Channel. Produced by Original Media, the program follows several teams of storm chasers as they attempt to intercept tornadoes in Tornado Alley in the United States. The show was canceled at the end of its 5th season by Discovery Communications on January 21, 2012.

Tony Laubach is an American storm chaser and meteorologist. He has participated in several field research projects and is one of the surviving members of TWISTEX. He has been contracted as a severe weather photojournalist for various major television networks, and has starred in several television shows, including Seasons 3 through 5 of Storm Chasers on the Discovery Channel.

Word Travels is an adventure travel television documentary series. An original Canadian production, the show debuted on OLN on January 30, 2008 and originally aired in Canada on OLN and Citytv, and worldwide on National Geographic Adventure. The show was co-hosted by Robin Esrock and Julia Dimon, produced by Omni Film Limited, and primarily filmed by Sean Cable.

Reed Timmer is an American meteorologist and storm chaser. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he took an interest in science, including weather, at a young age, before experiencing severe weather, including a hailstorm at age 13. After presenting weather forecasts at his high school, he began studying meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, completing his PhD in 2015.

Mike Hollingshead is an American professional storm chaser, photographer and videographer from Blair, Nebraska. His work has appeared on the cover of National Geographic. It was also featured in the films Take Shelter, The Fifth Estate and the series finale of Dexter. In 2008, Hollingshead released his first book titled Adventures in Tornado Alley: The Storm Chasers with co-author Eric Nguyen.

Peter Rowe is a Canadian filmmaker and author specializing in themes of history and exploration. He is the producer of the 49-part television series Angry Planet, which airs on streaming and television networks around the world. His book, Music vs The Man was published in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sean Casey (filmmaker)</span> American IMAX filmmaker and storm chaser

Sean Cameron Casey is an American IMAX filmmaker and storm chaser who appeared in the Discovery Channel reality television series Storm Chasers. Casey created an IMAX film called Tornado Alley about chasing tornadoes and had to build the Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV) and the Tornado Intercept Vehicle 2 (TIV2) to film inside a tornado. Tornado Alley was released worldwide on March 18, 2011. Casey has been named one of the 50 best minds of 2008 by Discover Magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Theiss</span> American storm chaser (born 1978)

Mike Theiss is a National Geographic photographer, on air talent, video producer, professional storm chaser. He is the CEO/Founder of Ultimate Chase Inc. that specializes in extreme nature photography. His work has been published in National Geographic magazine numerous times for displaying hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning, volcanoes, and other rare nature events.

<i>Storm Riders</i> (TV series) American TV series or program

Storm Riders is a reality television series following two meteorologists as they travel across the Great Plains and East Coast of the United States in search of thunderstorms, tornadoes, and other severe weather. Storm Riders was aired on The Weather Channel, and it was included on the channel's Tornado Week programming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2013 El Reno tornado</span> Widest and second-strongest tornado ever recorded

The 2013 El Reno tornado was an extremely large, powerful, and erratic tornado that occurred over rural areas of Central Oklahoma during the early evening of Friday, May 31, 2013. This rain-wrapped, multiple-vortex tornado was the widest tornado ever recorded and was part of a larger weather system that produced dozens of tornadoes over the preceding days. The tornado initially touched down at 6:03 p.m. Central Daylight Time (2303 UTC) about 8.3 miles (13.4 km) west-southwest of El Reno, rapidly growing in size and becoming more violent as it tracked through central portions of Canadian County. Remaining over mostly open terrain, the tornado did not impact many structures; however, measurements from mobile weather radars revealed extreme winds in excess of 313 mph (504 km/h) within the vortex. These are among the highest observed wind speeds on Earth, just slightly lower than the wind speeds of the 1999 Bridge Creek–Moore tornado. As it crossed U.S. 81, it had grown to a record-breaking width of 2.6 miles (4.2 km), beating the previous width record set in 2004. Turning northeastward, the tornado soon weakened. Upon crossing Interstate 40, the tornado dissipated around 6:43 p.m. CDT (2343 UTC), after tracking for 16.2 miles (26.1 km), it avoided affecting the more densely populated areas near and within the Oklahoma City metropolitan area.

<i>Tornado Chasers</i> (TV series) American TV series or program

Tornado Chasers is an American documentary series that premiered on September 19, 2012, on TVNweather.com. The program follows Reed Timmer and his team of storm chasers as they attempt to intercept tornadoes in Tornado Alley in the United States and Canada. Season 2, funded largely through a successful Kickstarter campaign, commenced on September 30, 2013. The series is a two-time Webby Award Honoree, once for Best Documentary Series in 2013, and again for Best Editing in 2014.

James M. Leonard, also known as "Cyclone Jim", was an American professional storm chaser, photographer, and videographer. Intercepting severe weather including thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes and typhoons, he was among the earliest storm chasers. He was the first to photograph an anticyclonic tornado.

Mark Robinson is a Canadian television meteorologist and storm chaser. He co-hosts the television series Storm Hunters and Unearthed, has appeared on the television series Angry Planet, and has made numerous other media appearances. In 2015, Robinson was named one of Canada's 100 greatest modern-day explorers by Canadian Geographic, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society.

References

  1. "George Kourounis » Speaker Profile » National Speakers Bureau". Archived from the original on 2012-01-05. Retrieved 2012-05-01. National Speakers - George Kourounis
  2. "Storm chaser keeps a close 'eye' on storms". Archived from the original on 2012-03-01. Retrieved 2009-03-06.
  3. "Angry Planet - Episodes". angryplanet.tv. Retrieved Mar 14, 2019.
  4. Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty (20 September 2023). "The first person inside the 'Gates of Hell'". Witness History (Podcast). BBC World Service.
  5. "OLN.ca". Archived from the original on 2009-02-18. Retrieved 2009-03-06.
  6. "Angry Planet – Worldwide Adventure Travel Television". angryplanet.tv. Retrieved Mar 14, 2019.
  7. Inc, Pelmorex Weather Networks. "Storm Hunters". The Weather Network. Retrieved Mar 14, 2019.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)