Film to include footage from Lawrence native

Lawrence native Greg Zamarripa made news two years ago after he survived Hurricane Charley.

Now he’s making news again; this time in the form of a hurricane documentary that will feature film footage he and fellow stormchaser Jim Reed captured while they were huddled under their car in Florida during the Category 4 storm.

Zamarripa will appear at 8 p.m. on Sunday night’s “Full Force Nature” on The Weather Channel. The show documents several first-person hurricane experiences, and Zamarripa’s is among them.

The footage shows walls of a nearby house flying by, a palm tree being uprooted and twisted shards of metal and wood sailing through the air. Zamarripa said the footage has been used for nearly every hurricane program he’s seen in the past two years.

He also said if the wind barrage had increased another 5 miles per hour, he wouldn’t have survived. The high school science teacher, who now lives in Atlanta, recently came back to Kansas to chase tornadoes.

“Tornadoes are a lot better,” he said. “They’re stronger, but they’re smaller.”