This is a special collaboration between the Global News podcast and the BBC Weather Team. I'm Alex Ritson and two weeks on from the start of the LA wildfires. We're looking at the increasing and terrifying number of news stories around the world involving extreme weather. I'm here at the BBC Weather Studio in London with weather reporter and meteorologist Chris Forks. Chris,

hello. Hello. Tell me about what you do.

So here at the BBC Weather Centre, we produce well over 100 forecasts each day. We broadcast to

a couple of hundred million people on TV and radio at the BBC.

We're quite a small team, actually. We've got 12 presenters that work here around the clock here at the

weather centre. And you've got some incredible equipment which we'll tour a little bit later on.

We'll come back to you later in this podcast. We're also going to be

joined by our tech editor Zoe Kleinman, Greyer Jackson from the climate question. Marco Silver

from BBC Verify and Myra Anubi from people fixing the world. We'll be finding out why extreme

weather events are on the increase, what role climate change plays,

and how we can better predict, contain and even prevent some of the most devastating results.

But first, let's start with a reminder of why all this matters.

The National Weather Service is predicting close to hurricane force level winds.

The anticipated winds combined with low humidities and low fuel moistures will keep the fire threat in all of Los Angeles County critical.

Please be patient with those people are saying, I just want to go look at my house and I want to see what's left. We know that, but we have people literally looking for the remains of your

neighbors. In some areas, more than a year's worth of rain fell in just a few hours.

It is a catastrophe. The floods we had in 1982 when I was 10 years old were a joke compared to what happened here yesterday.

Thousands of hectares of farmland have been destroyed, and the UN is mourning more than half a million people are in urgent need of food and drinking water.

We already displaced people from war zones

and after the floods, we don't have anything left.

It's the worst drought I've ever seen in my entire life.

Joao and others are carrying huge, heavy bottles of water on their backs.

...