Eyes on the storm
Most people don’t like bad weather, but there are some who can’t live without it 

WORDS: JOHN SILCOX
PHOTOGRAPHY: SEBASTIAN NEVOLLS 

THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED HERE IN AUDI MAGAZINE

When winter storms roll in, the small Portuguese port of Nazare plays host to some of the biggest breaking waves in the world. On these days, the local fishermen keep their boats in the harbour and stay at home. But not Andrew Cotton. Instead, this Englishman takes to the water to surf down the face of monsters, some more than 50 feet high.

‘Big wave surfers like me tend to watch weather reports religiously,’ says the man from Braunton, Devon. ‘It’s our geeky thing. Surfing is very different to other sports because you are training for a moment but you don’t know when it will come, so you need to be ready at all times. It’s not like football where the match will kick off at 11am on Sunday. The weather could change at any minute.’

The waves Andrew likes to surf are so large that he often needs to be pulled in by jet ski so he is travelling fast enough to catch them. Every October and November he trains in Portugal alongside a close-knit group of professional athletes from all over the globe. They all take turns driving the jet skis to pull each other into the swell. 

‘People think big wave surfing is an adrenaline sport but it’s totally the opposite,’ he says. ‘The best moments I’ve ever had are when time slows down and I’m in a flow state, where I feel immersed in the power the ocean. It’s slow motion and almost like meditation.’

That said, it still remains an incredibly dangerous practice. Last year Andrew was crushed by a huge wave and broke his back. He has only returned to the water recently, after spending 11 months in recovery. 

 ‘Surfing can give you a different spin on life,’ he explains. ‘You appreciate the smaller things, especially after an injury. Even if I could never surf again, I would still get excited to see a storm come in. I’d be excited for the waves my friends would be able to surf. Even though only one person is riding the wave, it takes a full team to get them there.’

No man is an island, yet for landscape artist Norman Ackroyd, the deep relationship between the two is a source of incredible power. The 80-year-old has devoted more than half of his life travelling to capture scenes from small and remote islands around the British Isles, as well as the heavy weather that often enshrouds them.

‘I’ve always been fascinated by people who live on small islands,’ explains the Royal Academy Senior Fellow. ‘When your home is a rock on the west coast of Ireland or Scotland, you can be cut off from civilisation for months at a time because of bad weather. Before helicopters, if you had a banal sickness like appendicitis, you’d die. It was a much more precarious life.’

Norman himself was born in Yorkshire – ‘on an island like every other Briton’ – but moved to the US in the 1960s. He considered settling down there, but something about the raw geology and brooding skies of home drew him back.

‘I came back in 1973 because I had huge memories of the maps of the British Isles and I wanted to go and see what my home was and the landscape I was made from. It’s not that I like bad weather in itself, but clouds, mist and rain is what you get out in the sea isles most of the time.’

A map in his studio in Bermondsey pays homage to his travels, with hundreds of pins marking where he has been. Out in the field, Norman paints watercolours or etches copper plates. He finishes them using resins and acids when he returns, before rolling them through large presses to make captivating prints. 

‘What I’m trying to communicate is nothing literal,’ says Norman, whose work is currently the object of a new exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. ‘It’s that feeling of being content with who and what you are without needing words. Loving the place you come from and will eventually return to. While I’m still here, I’ll try and record something of this experience.’

Meteorologists John Hammond and Sara Thornton want us to care more about the weather – even if it’s grey and miserable outside. The duo has set up a new forecasting service called WeatherTrending that makes the weather easier to understand and more relevant to everyday life.

‘For something that’s the nation’s favourite conversation starter, it’s surprising how little the general public knows about the science behind weather,’ explains John. ‘Basically, there are two main ingredients: the movement of warm and cold air, and the spin of the Earth’s rotation. This is called the quasi-geostrophic omega equation. It sounds and looks hideously complicated, but boil it all down and it’s just a case of looking at rising and falling air. It’s beautifully simple.’

Both John and Sara have a background in broadcasting. He was a weatherman at the BBC for 30 years, and she trained as a journalist and news presenter before going into weather presenting in 2003. This wealth of experience fuels their desire to break from traditional weather presenting.

‘We’ve all grown up looking at the same charts dotted with icons, numbers and turgid messages,’ says Sara. ‘Originally weather forecasts were invented for the military during the war, yet we still use the same process today. Take a look at messages like gales or severe gales – what does that actually mean? To a fighter pilot it may be relevant, but for most people it’s pointless.’

The duo also wants to excite people about the fascinating weather phenomena that affect the UK every day. Being an island at the edge of a continent and an ocean, at the crossroads of a number of main air streams, Britain boasts unique and extremely changeable weather patterns.

‘I want people to share my passion for the weather,’ says John. ‘It’s magical once you take a closer look. I’m constantly amazed by the way it continues to humble us. There’s something wondrous about this amazing force of nature  that there’s no avoiding.’

According to a Scandinavian adage, there’s no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate clothing. So if, like clothing designer T-Michael, you happen to live and work in Bergen, Norway – officially Europe’s rainiest city – then it’s vital to dress appropriately. But that doesn’t mean forgetting about fashion, which is why he has developed a successful line of tailored raincoats called Norwegian Rain.

‘I’m not the type of person who would normally wear a raincoat,’ explains T-Michael. ‘I love rich materials such as cotton, wool and cashmere, so when I started Norwegian Rain I didn’t want my creations to look shiny or plastic. The aim was to make a super-stylish garment you could wear every day, whether it was raining or not – but which would still provide you with protection in the worst conditions.’

Bergen provided the perfect environment for testing the designs in terrible weather conditions, inspiring a number of technical functions to repel the wind and water while still allowing the body
to breathe. The coats’ unique qualities meant the company expanded rapidly. The brand is now present in a number of cities including Oslo, Paris, London and Tokyo. 

‘I had an affinity for the Japanese way of thinking even though I’d never been there,’ says T-Michael. ‘I incorporated that culture into Norwegian Rain – stripping away anything that wasn’t necessary from the jackets to keep as close to the original cut as possible.’ 

Adopting new cultures is something that comes naturally to the designer. Being born in Ghana and then spending his teenage years in London, he has absorbed many influences. He’s also learned to appreciate the rain after spending more than 30 years in Norway. 

 ‘Some people get the blues when it rains, but for me it’s different. Building up my brand has required me to spend a lot of time indoors, so when it’s raining it comforts me that I’m not missing anything outside. I get this calmness – and this is where my creativity comes from. It helps me dig a little deeper.’

‘Nothing can compare to the adrenaline rush you get from witnessing the brute force of a supercell thunderstorm,’ says storm chaser David Vicary. ‘It is nothing like the bad weather we get in the UK. Imagine enormous mountains in the sky that spin, turn green, spit out tornadoes and flash full of light, while showering you in lumps of ice the size of your head. It’s utterly awesome.’

David first caught the ‘storm bug’, as he calls it, when he was a child, watching an electrical storm from the window
of his parents’ bedroom. He went on to study natural disasters at university before specialising in liability forecasting for insurance firms in London. Now he spends
a few months each year in the USA, chasing some of the largest storms in the world.  

To share his passion, David has set up a tour company called See Nature’s Fury to take people along on his trips. The US storm season lasts from March until June, and each year there’ll be approximately 1000 storms with tornadoes. To track them, David analyses a wealth of data and satellite imagery using a mobile tech hub. He then drives for thousands of miles to be there when a storm is breaking.

‘The magic hour starts at 5pm,’ he explains. ‘That’s when a storm goes ballistic. It can be a sunny day, and then a cloud twice the size of Everest will rocket up like a volcanic eruption. Things can change quickly so you need to be alert – you don’t want to get caught in the centre of things.’

Chasing  storms can be dangerous. More than once David has had close calls, and he’s written off a few vehicles. Some of his fellow storm chasers have even lost their lives, but the risks still don’t deter him.

‘To go out into these big expanses and feel the might of these natural phenomena gives you an incredible sense of freedom,’ he reveals. ‘I always come back feeling better mentally, and I appreciate the benevolent weather we have over here in the UK, even though it is a bit boring.’

Richard Van Den Bergh has a sentimental connection to snow, but probably not for the reasons you would imagine. The white stuff makes him quite nostalgic, but it has nothing to do with Christmas, or even winter, as this special-effects coordinator can whip it up at any time of the year. It was, in fact, the first effect he ever created on a film set, kicking off his long career in the industry. 

‘I learned that the best special effects are the ones you don’t notice,’ he says. ‘There are amazing films, such as Seven or The Shining, where the whole tone is set by special weather effects. But it’s never pointed out because people just think it was real. That’s when you know a job is well done.’

Over the years, Richard has showcased his skills on an impressive list of films including Beauty and the Beast, Rambo, Everest, Johnny English Strikes Again and Alien vs Predator, plus a number of commercial projects including more than 40 Audi adverts. He has created many different weather effects and model buildings, but snow remains his speciality.

‘The secret to doing snow well is that less gives more,’ he explains. ‘You don’t want to whitewash the set because it will look fake. Then you need to learn about which materials work in which conditions. I use a very long list of things to make fake snow: detergent foam, shredded paper, polystyrene, magnesium sulphate, bath salts, chalk, lime – and a million and one other trade secrets. Each of these ingredients has its  advantages and inconveniences.’

When filming outside, the natural elements can often interfere. Sunshine, wind and rain all present their own difficulties, but the biggest challenge is matching real snow with fake snow – especially when a film is being shot between outside locations and studio sets.

‘It’s easy to get hung up on it all,’ says Richard. ‘But I always remember the advice of my mentor,  Gordon. One day he found me obsessing over the tiniest details, so he stopped me before uttering the immortal words: “Listen mate, if the audience is looking that closely at the snow, the acting can’t be that bloody good.” ’