BBCEwa sucked into storm and lives to tell
A German paraglider survived lightning, pounding hail, minus 40-degree temperatures and oxygen deprivation after a storm system sucked her to an altitude higher than Mount Everest.
Ewa Wisnierska, 35, passed out due to a lack of oxygen and flew unconscious for up to an hour covered in ice after reaching an altitude of 9947 metres - near the cruising height of a jumbo jet.
The champion sportswoman's survival was like "winning Lotto 10 times in a row", Australia's most experienced paraglider says.
Wisnierska says experience told her she had no chance of survival, but a doctor told her that blacking out had saved her.
"It was because that I got unsconscious because then the heart slows down all the functions - it saved my life," she told ABC radio.
Froze to death
A Chinese man who flew into the same storm near Manilla in northern NSW on Wednesday did not share Ms Wisnierska's luck.
He Zhongpin, 42, was found 75 kilometres away from his launch site, and most likely suffocated or froze to death after being sucked into the storm, hang gliding experts say.
Ms Wisnierska's top speed of ascent was clocked at 20 metres per second and her descent at 33 metres per second by an on-board tracking system, she told ABC radio.
She described the violence of the storm system as "amazing".
''You can't imagine the power - you feel like nothing, like a leaf from a tree going up,'' she told the ABC.
"I was shaking all the time - the last thing I remember it was dark, I could hear lightning all around me.
"I knew I was in the middle of the thunderstorm and I could not do anything.
I knew the chances to survive are almost zero
"From the theory, I knew the chances to survive are almost zero, I knew I can only have luck, I can't do anything - and I got it."
Wisnierska had been training for the upcoming Paragliding World Championships when she was sucked into the violent storm.
She regained consciousness in mid-air up to an hour later.
"I wanted to fly around the clouds but I got sucked 20 metres per second up into it and started to spiral," she told smh.com.au.
"After 40 minutes or an hour, I woke up and I was 6900 metres.
SMH
