The engine had exploded, the cabin filled with smoke, and he pulled the ejection lever, knowing he was choosing between two possible deaths. The air up there was so thin that body fluids began to vaporize, and the cold was intense enough to freeze one's skin in seconds. His oxygen mask tore off, and he began to lose consciousness as his blood literally boiled.
The parachute opened, but instead of bringing him back to earth, it dragged him into a massive cumulonimbus cloud, a column of thunderstorm clouds that extended almost to his own altitude. Pilots avoid these clouds because they are vertical engines of destruction, with currents that can lift an aircraft. Rankin fell into it, hanging from a parachute. The currents pushed him upward, knocked him sideways, then dropped him into the void before sucking him back up. It was like being trapped in a living vortex.
Hail struck him violently, leaving bruises all over him. Lightning flashed so close he could smell the ozone, and the electricity made his hair stand on end. Thunder crushed his chest like a physical blow. The rain was so heavy it became impossible to breathe: he inhaled water, coughed, and choked. The parachute filled with water and collapsed, sending him plummeting, then suddenly opened again and tore him upward. He vomited, lost consciousness, and awoke again amidst the chaos.
The temperature fluctuated constantly. Above, the frost formed a layer of ice on him; lower down, that ice melted, only to refreeze a few seconds later. The G-forces crushed and released him relentlessly. His body was a single bruise, exhausted and hypothermic. Time warped: minutes that felt like hours, an endless torment suspended between heaven and earth.
Then, suddenly, the storm spat him out. At about 3,000 meters, he finally saw the trees. He descended through the canopy, branches snapping, and his parachute caught enough to slow his fall. He hit the ground battered, bleeding, but alive. He lay there for a few minutes, unable to believe he'd survived, then he got up and began walking until he reached a road and a farmhouse. The farmer who opened the door to him found a broken man who simply said he'd "just fallen from the sky."
When the doctors and meteorologists heard his story, they were incredulous. No one had ever survived such conditions: extreme decompression, lethal cold, lightning, hail, vertical winds that could have torn apart a plane. Rankin spent weeks in the hospital, suffering from frostbite, internal trauma, and burns from nearby lightning strikes.
The following year, he recounted his experiences in his book, The Man Who Rode the Thunder, the only firsthand account of anyone who ever survived a thunderstorm at that altitude.
His experience became a source of inspiration for meteorologists and pilots, a living example of how hostile the sky can be when it decides to close in on a man. Rankin should never have survived. Yet he did.
