Mother Nature occasionally elevates us mere mortals to the record books with tales of almost unbelievable survival. Earlier this month a swimmer was half swallowed by a shark, finding his head and shoulders to mid chest in that shark's maw. He gouged it's eye - and it spat him out. He survived with minor injuries.
Yesterday German woman Ewa Wisnierska ( 35 ) was practising for the World Paragliding Championships in northern New South Wales when two storm centres combined to form a dreaded Cumulo Nimbus cloud. These clouds contain incredible wind speeds and are avoided by aviators because they are capable of tearing aircraft apart with their fury.
Ewa found herself caught up in a violent updraft, rising at twenty metres per second until she was higher than Mount Everest at 8850 metres. This is what climbers describe as " the death zone " - where lack of oxygen slows reactions and induces paralysis.
She was surrounded by lightning and severe hail - and the temperature dropped to between - 40 and - 50 c. Frost and ice covered her body and she lost consciousness - drifting helplessly beneath her paraglider canopy.
Amazingly this storm spat her out. She regained consciousness to find herself at a lower altitude - sixty kilometres from her launch site - and made a safe landing. Shaken - and with mild frostbite - she courageously intends to be a competitor when the championships are held in Australia next week.
A fellow Chinese competitor was not so lucky. Caught in the same storm he did not survive and his body was found after the storm passed.
Surviving the dreaded anvil shaped cloud is one of those freakish things that can not be explained in any rational way. EWa is simply a very lucky woman - and she would be well advised to invest in a lottery ticket and Lotto entry after that sort of luck !
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