because of the purely because of the yearning desire to help those who were downtrodden at always been there either through her social work politics. the president cyril ramaphosa has just been speaking and saying that she will be honoured with an official state funeral and that the funeral will be at the stadium not far from here that the funeral will be at the stadium not farfrom here on that the funeral will be at the stadium not far from here on the 14th of april. a memorial service will be held on the 11th. so we're back here, wheeze to cover the anti—apartheid struggle tear, to hear from the people themselves paying tribute to their own leader when he mandela. looking behind you, there appears to bea looking behind you, there appears to be a lot of young south africans there, they are the born free generation. are they aware of her contribution to their freedom today? 0h, contribution to their freedom today? oh, yes, indeed. these young people love to winnie mandela. they love

her even now in song, and with their chants, because she was militant herself. she never gave the white minority rule police and state machinery one inch of an advantage. she fought for every possible right that was denied to her. therefore, these people here are missing a level of militancy. nowadays, leaders are talking about economic growth, concepts that may not mean much for them, because they are unemployed and they want somebody that will be openly advocating their own rights. milton, outside winnie's home. thank you. now, the world. this time on weather world we're marking 100 years

of the royal air force. and where better than here at its biggest base, raf brize norton? nick and i have been finding out about high ground operations work with air traffic control in times of severe weather to keep this crucial military airbase operational. and i'll be at raf marham in norfolk, sharing some of my experiences of being an operational forecaster on an raf base. also, crippling cold, the uk and much of europe falls victim to the beast from the east. freak freeze... the flood that turned to ice. how a weather disaster can strike as if from nowhere. the storms that can sweep you off your feet. but some people try to carry on regardless! this year marks the

centenary of the raf. we've come to its largest station, raf brize norton in oxfordshire, home to almost 6000 service personnel. the aircraft based here support british military operations around the globe. it's surprisingly busy, with frequent landings, departures and training manoeuvres. a lot of what happens in a military airport like this is very different from a commercial airport — but some things are the same. air traffic control is the hub of all activity and that's where sarah is now. i'm here with simon, who's in charge of all air traffic control here and tell me, why is it so important brize norton stays open all year round? well it's home to the raf strategic

and tactical air transport fleet. we're also the gateway to operations across the world. that's to say delivering, whether it's troops, cargo or disaster relief as we saw at the end of 2017 in the caribbean. meteorology and aviation will always be intrinsically linked, how do you get your weather information here at air traffic control? we're very lucky in the fact that we have our own met office, they pass the weather information across to here in air traffic control via fax, would you believe, this is translated into our local systems for reference by controllers. you get this fax with coded weather information, and how is the weather looking out there today? it's looking pretty good out there at the moment, the met office are forecasting 30 kilometres with no weather phenomena, a cloud base of 2800 feet and positive temperatures of plus 11. how important is it that

at the operations you get a detailed weather forecast? it is important to be aware of what the weather is doing so that we pass accurate information on to pilots transiting through or operating into or out of raf brize norton. it's notjust pilots that need to be prepared, but we all need to be ready for whatever the weather throws at us. bitterly cold weather over the past few days coming from siberia, the beast from the east as it's been called... are you ready for the beast from the east? weather blowing in from russia is set to make parts of the uk colder than the arctic. spring on hold, early march and a winterfightback brings much of the uk to a standstill in the coldest, snowiest weather since 2010. my god! in scotland, some traffic keeps moving... but only just. no, no, no! in wales, the snow blows into drifts so deep they bury cars.

bitterly cold siberian air with severe wind—chill and widespread snow puts britain in a big freeze, producing the coldest march day on record. this is going to be tricky and i don't think i've got enough traction to pull the car through the snowdrift. what are you going to do? go home and have a cup of tea. that's the answer to everything, isn't it? some railway lines were overwhelmed. this driver's eye view shows what, for now, is the end of the line. so what caused the so—called beast from the east? the answer can be found in the stratosphere, high above the arctic, where the normal flow of air weakened, allowing air to descend and warm by as much as 50 degrees. this is sudden stratospheric warming. but it also impacts the jet stream, reversing it from its usual westerly

to an easterly flow, resulting in bitterly cold air from siberia carried across much of europe. few places escaped. in italy, rome gets its biggest snowfall in decades, covering the city's landmarks. cue a mass snowball fight in st peter's square next to the vatican, even priestsjoined in! but even before the beast from the east, winter in europe had produced some snowy surprises. this is moscow in february, after its heaviest one—day snowfall on record. 38 centimetres, more than half what the city would normally get in an entire month. in january, unusually heavy snowfall hits parts of africa too — this is morocco. the snow even reached the edge of the sahara desert in algeria. it does get cold here,

but there is rarely enough moisture for any precipitation. winter white—out in iran, as the capital tehran is blanketed with heavy snow in january, much welcome moisture here offering some brief drought relief. can you believe this is tallahassee, florida ? and we are getting snow? no, we can't, but it is, and injanuary it's the first measurable snow here in nearly three decades. more familiar territory for a winter storm, the north—east usa, several of them in march and this one gave the city of boston its snowiest march day on record. this storm that struck at the start of the year was dubbed a bomb cyclone, hitting boston with notjust wind, not just snow, but a three foot flooding storm surge. then this. after the flood, the big freeze, and astonishing scenes as frozen

floodwater entombs cars in ice. back to the beast from the east. this video shows the huge effort at raf brize norton to keep the runway open in the face of prolonged snowfall, blowing around and drifting in the wind. as some commercial airports succumb to the severe weather, closing the crucial runway here is never an option. sergeant natasha watkins, you were here on duty during and before the beast from the east, and all of this kit was much busier then, of course. when did you first hear it was coming? so, the met office that we have based here, gave us a warning on tuesday, the beast from the east was coming on the thursday. so we spent some time checking the manpower, checking the operational aircraft, which priority they would take, making sure our equipment was ready. kind of all the things that you plan for without it actually happening. it must have been

an amazing few days? it was, yeah. you're laughing about it, this was an experience? it was, incredible. why was it so valuable to your teams, going through that and dealing with all of that cold and snow? so, they carry out training prior to the start of every season and it's a dry run. you don't really get to use it in anger until something like the beast from the east comes in. do you actually like snow yourself? everybody says i'm a hot weather person, but i really like it. i like it when i'm operational, rather than being out in it myself. this is one of the ploughs that was operational. sarah is up in the cab. that's right. i've got prime position, and there is a fleet of eight of these vehicles here at brize norton. i'm with pete, one of the men involved in keeping the airfield open in all types of weather, and so, it's been quite a busy winter for you? really busy this year.

when the beast from the east affected us, we had these vehicles out for 56 hours, constantly, up and down the runway, maintaining it, keeping it open. you can control all the elements of the vehicle from the cab? yeah, this computer controls the snow plough at the front, the brushes in the middle, and the blowers at the back. shall we hop out and you can show me what those pieces of equipment look like from the ground? certainly. great. we saw how it is controlled in the cab, talk me through the equipment down here on the ground, starting at the front. the plough at the front, the idea is it pushes the snow out the way, in the direction of the wind, pushing it to the left or the right. further down, what's the next? the brushes brush the snow, so what's left after the snow ploughs brush the snow away, there will be a layer of snow, the brushes break it up, they pushit in the same direction as the snowplough, at the back, the blowers, it blows all the excess liquid or slush away from the airfield, again,

in the same direction. thank you so much for explaining all that. now, a little bit later we'll be talking to air traffic control to see how their teams work with this team to deal with the beast from the east. 20 years ago i began my weather career on an raf base and i forecast for aircraft like the tornado behind me. i've come here to raf marham to find out how the world of meteorology have changed. i've come inside to the met office at raf marham, the forecasters are watching the weather, making the documents, ready for the briefing much like i used to do when i started to weather forecast, it's all for people such as this, squadron leaderjim furness, who has 3000 hours of flying under his belt with the tornados. we were at cranwell at the same time. you were learning to fly there. right from the start, meteorology forms a big part

of the flying training? it's a key, basic skill every aviator learns during basic training. when we were back at cranwell in the day, the forecast was generally the same, delivered on acetate slides, whereas now, technology moved forward and it's delivered through computer but fundamentally it's still the same sort of forecast, delivering a concise, clear picture to aviators of what weather conditions they can expect during their training or flight. you have flown the tornado and lancaster bomber, how has the situation changed as far as using the weather forecast? the lancaster is a precious aircraft, one of two flying in the world, and we need to make sure we don't want to expose it to any adverse weather conditions. it doesn't have equipment on board to help us actively read the weather in the way the tornado can, so we have to be very careful about the conditions we expose it to. i remember eyeballing the pilots, there was always a bit more pressure

to forecast for the lancaster. we'll come back to you later, we'll look at different ways the weather is being tackled, join us later in the programme, to see the novel ways the raf used to tackle fog, especially during the second world war. now some of your weather watcher pictures from the early spring white—out. few places escaped the snow which blanketed large parts of the british isles, the situation made worse, as it blown into drifts by the bitterly cold easterly wind. but it wasn't just snow, there was also freezing rain. this is when supercooled raindrops freeze instantly to anything they touch — the result, a layer of glazed ice which makes for some of the most beautiful, but hazardous winter weather there is. you can become a bbc weather watcher by signing up online at bbc.co.uk/weatherwatchers. still to come, fighting fog — how the raf cleared the air to keep flying. plus, we look at how technology

in the tornado aircraft behind me has radically improved landing conditions in the raf. we are back at raf brize norton, and we saw earlier all the work that was done to keep this important military airport open during the cold spell, the so—called beast from the east. how do they know whether the runway is safe to take off or land on? this is such an important piece of kit, it's cold a mu meter and corporal natalie adams is with me to tell me what it does. what does it do? it's designed to test the friction on the runway. we'll get the readings from a laptop inside. how does it work? we'll put the wheel down on the back... there it goes. and that's fed through wires into the vehicle through to the laptop. that's how we'll get the readings. clearly nothing wrong with the friction on the runway

today, but we're going to give it a training run anyway, let's get in and see it in action. time to put it through its paces, we're on a taxiway, sean is driving us, head off when you're ready. here we go. what is going to happen now? we're going to test the friction of the runway. we're currently getting up to 40mph as quickly as possible. we will stay at a steady pace because that will make sure we get the correct readings. accurate readings. the wheel is down. yes, that's where we get the readings from. we're ready for a a0 miles an hour emergency stop, whenever you're ready... yes! i felt that, safely done. we have done the stop, what are you looking for in terms of readings? we'll get readings, and 0.7 is a good reading, anything below that means the friction on the runway isn't very good, and then

we would have to look at why, is it ice, do we need to start de—icing? that's some weather science from here at the surface. now, sarah has some more from a long way up in the sky. you'll often hear meteorologists talking about the jet stream but what is it? how are they formed and why are they important? a jet stream is a fast—moving, narrow ribbon of air high up in the atmosphere, about 30,000 feet, or six miles above our heads. jet streams are formed at the boundary of two air masses, so for instance in the north atlantic cold polar air meets milder subtropical air. jet streams here typically flow from west to east, down to the easterly rotation of the earth and the resulting coriolis effect. jet streams can be thousands of miles long, and can travel at speeds of more than 200 miles an hour, so they have a dramatic affect on air travel, depending whether you are travelling with or against the jet stream,

flight times and fuel consumption can be dramatically affected. and what about the weather? well, jet streams don't always flow in a straight line, we see ripples and buckles in the streams and quite small—scale ripples can lead to rapidly deepening depressions, while big meanders mean some areas can see successful weather systems, whereas other parts of the world and see quieter weather with a blocking area of high pressure. observing and predicting the behaviour of jet streams is the most vital tool for a weather forecaster. into europe injanuary. a strong jet stream drove some powerful atlantic weather systems into europe injanuary. the driver of this car braved a flooded seafront road in ireland as storm eleanor arrived with winds of up to 100 miles an hour. another storm roared across northern europe later in january, literally blowing people off their feet in the netherlands. many were caught off—guard, despite the highest level of weather warning for wind. this roof was no match for some

of the most powerful winds ever recorded here. the storm killed several people in the netherlands and germany. in the french capital, paris, weeks of heavy rain sent the river seine soaring again — it was the wettest december and january here in 50 years. mudslides surged through neighbourhoods in the usa — this is southern california in january. torrential rains poured on ground scorched and cleared of vegetation by the state's largest wildfire in history, the mud had nowhere to go and nothing to hold it back. more than 20 people were killed in the devastation that followed. tropical cyclones have continued to roam the pacific. in february, tonga is in the firing line of cyclone giza, the worst to hit the country since modern weather records began 60 years ago.

among the casualties and the widespread destruction, the more than century—old parliament building. in australia injanuary, it's near—record summer heat that is making the headlines as temperatures in sydney top 47 celsius. and in south africa, unprecedented drought takes cape town closer to becoming the world's first major city to run out of water. every day without rain takes the 4 million people who live here closer to the day the taps run dry. brazil in february, and the eerie sight of a forest trail completely submerged by water. the flood subsided almost as quickly as it came but it produced scenes that look like they come from another world. newsreel: continuous lines of petrol burners are a vital feature of fog investigation dispersal operations or in raf parlance, operation fido.

over the 100 years of raf operations, how they tackle the weather elements has changed dramatically. today we could never imagine this but during the second world war the problem of fog was met by this unusual solution, fido. the public should know that fido, in this war, has saved over 10,000 aircrew lives. fido has made it possible to carry out operations in base weather which would have stopped all flying in the past. first operational use of fido was in november 1943. .. when low—lying fog made it unsafe for aircraft to land, they would be diverted to fido—enabled air fields, where gas filled lanes running alongside the base would be set ablaze, the heat burning away the fog, giving pilots clear sight of the runways as they returned home following skirmishes over the skies of germany. that system contained 500,000 gallons of petrol when full,

costing thousands every time it was deployed. such costly methods would never be used these days. at the base we have an infra—red camera... as the squadron leader explains, aviation technology in planes such as the tornado has really moved on. tornado is designed as an all—weather capable aircraft and to help us fly at low altitude we have a terrain falling radar housed in the lower nose, and that will scan in front of the aircraft, reading the terrain, and combining with the autopilot it allows the aircraft to fly at low altitude at any height we desire in any weather imaginable. so, technology may have changed but we've got the same problems, landing, getting back to base, how do you deal with fog? a couple of ways, we can either use assistance from the ground, air—traffic control, a precision approach radar, where they will talk you back down, and we've also got instrument landing system, which is common across multiple types of aircraft, the pilot follows steering commands, back down to the runway, the final option with this

is when we combine radar, my skills as a radar operator from the back—seat, and pilot flying skills. if we can't see the ground or the runway by a set height, about 200ft, at that point we're going to go around and we're going to fly off to our diversion. all down to the forecast. squadron leader, thank you. it's going to be a dull and wet start to the day... it's notjust how we deal with the weather that has changed over the years but also how it looks on tv screens, computers and mobile phones. bbc weather‘s appearance has come a long way since the first television forecast more than 60 years ago. so, that's the picture this morning. watch out for ice first thing this morning, too... and in february, another new look was unveiled. simon hunt is our creative director — talk us through what viewers can expect to see with the new graphics. they will notice the map looks

different, it's high—resolution, it's green, go in closer, and you can see high—resolution data for the weather. we have the ability to show a 3d globe which the presenters can move around quite easily to create the editorial story they want to tell. we were looking beyond the clouds at the end of january, as parts of the world marvelled at an extremely rare celestial event, a super blue blood moon. "super" because it was a full moon, when the moon is at its closest to the earth, making it appear larger than usual. "blue" because it was the second full moon of the month, that's where the phrase for a very infrequent event, "once in a blue moon" comes from. and "blood" when the moon's reddish colour during a total lunar eclipse. it's the first time these elements have combined since 1866. not quite as rare but it's still six years since people have been able to do this, skate on amsterdam's frozen canals.

and finally, another snowstorm in boston, usa, this is a man dressed as elsa from the disney film frozen, pushing a police truck. oh, just let it go! # the cold never bothered me anyway... that's it from us. you can find clips of our previous episodes at bbc.co.uk/weatherworld. we will be back later in the year — until then, keep checking the forecast! most of us will agree the weather's not been great in the last few days. right now it is still snowing across the north of the uk. certainly the southern uplands of scotland, the highlands further snow to come tonight. and more rain in the north of england and in northern ireland. and further south we have the mild air. so no snow for you here.

these are the troublesome area tonight, if you're travelling tonight, glasgow, edinburgh, some snow there. most of the snow will settle across the southern uplands and further north in the highlands. but it is mostly slushy stuff. it has been so far. that isn't going to change. to the south of the snow the winds are coming out of the south west. so this is mild air and tonight there will be a huge temperature contrast between the south and the north of the country. where it is snowing, that is where the cold air is. here temperatures around just above freezing, so the snow will be wet and slushy. to the south, 5am, ten degrees in london. a mild start in the south. this low pressure, this large area of low pressure is with us on tuesday. we can see some breaks in the weather. it won't be all bad. on tuesday some sunshine around.

the best of the weather i suspect will be across parts of wales, england, but even here some showers are expected during the day. but look how it brightens up across the south. different for northern ireland and certainly for scotland. still cold here. temperatures of five in aberdeen, four orfive in glasgow and edinburgh. but 15 across the south of the country in the sunny spells. but there will be some showers around as well. and the story for the rest week is for things to turn a little bit more settled. there will be some showers around on wednesday. that is probably the really unsettled day in terms of changing from sunshine to rain and back. the trend over the next few days will be for milder air to sweep in from the south and the south—east could become really mild. that is the latest. welcome to outside source. we begin in south africa. winnie mandela has died aged 81. decades she fought apartheid alongside her nelson

mandela. people have gathered at her home in soweto to mourn a woman known as the mother of the nation. three months of strikes on french railway itself started. emmanuel macron is taking on labour reform challenges. we also look at a new space mission. plus, the bbc once an equal number of men and women as experts on its news programmes. we explain our role in that announcement.