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It’s not hyperbole to say that a significant number of meteorologists working today never would’ve thought to enter the field if it weren’t for the 1996 blockbuster Twister. Meteorology programs around the United States saw a surge in admissions in the years after the movie came out. Following the success of its cousin film, Twisters, this weekend—it earned more than $80 million domestically at the box office—the franchise is now set to lure in many more.
Given the renewed interest in atmospheric science Twisters is sure to generate, it’s worth investigating exactly what the movie gets right and wrong—what jargon is real, how twin tornadoes start, and whether or not that whole “diaper” thing would actually work.
From the first frames it’s clear that Twisters was made to deliver both accuracy and action. “Our scientists worked hard behind the scenes with the producers to make the science as accurate and realistic (in some parts!) as possible,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in a blog post coinciding with the movie’s release last Friday. As such, its cast of fast-talking storm chasers are searching—like the cast of the 1996 film—for ways to warn people about tornadoes and even prevent the damage they cause.
Twisters opens with a group of meteorology students hoping to score a research grant by deploying Dorothy, the whirly-sensor filled contraption that served as the technological crux of Twister. In addition to Dorothy’s sensors, they’re also looking to release a chemical compound that could essentially choke a tornado and stop it.
During their geeky conversations, one of the students mentions the “death ridge”—the nickname for a dome of high pressure that brings very hot weather and calm conditions to the central United States. This dome, both in the movie and in real storm-chasing, involves the kind of hot and dry conditions that are terrible for the formation of tornadoes.
Later on, another chaser mentions the Fujiwhara effect. Spiraling low-pressure systems tend to rotate around one another when they get too close. We see this Fujiwhara effect every once in a while with hurricanes over the open ocean. But it could happen with tornadoes as well, as it does in Twisters.
Speaking of twin tornadoes, can that really happen like it does in the movie? Yes. There are plenty of documented cases where one thunderstorm produces several tornadoes at the same time.
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A storm that hit Dunlap, Indiana, during the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak in 1965 spawned twin tornadoes that cycled around one another just as we see in the film. Those twins were memorialized in one of the most well-known photographs in weather history.
Larger tornadoes are often made up of smaller vortices circulating within a single funnel. These multiple-vortex twisters can be responsible for some of the worst damage in the wake of a terrible storm. The smaller suction vortices, as they’re sometimes called, have been documented by mobile Doppler radar packing winds of more than 300 mph.
OK, so the film’s “twins” are possible, but what about its flaming tornado? During one of Twisters’ climatic moments multiple fireballs fill the stormy skies as a violent tornado runs through an industrial refinery. The twister briefly ingests the flames to become a formidable (albeit brief) firenado.
Fire whirls are real, though not quite the way they show in the movie. Intense wildfires are well known for creating their own weather. If conditions are just right, some of these blazes can spark thunderstorms over or near the fire.
While most fire whirls form in a similar ground-up fashion as dust devils, strong wind shear created by the fire itself can force those pyrocumulonimbus clouds to acquire the rotation needed to generate a tornado.
National Weather Service meteorologists confirmed that a fire whirl spun up during the Carr Fire near Redding, California, on July 26, 2018. Survey crews determined the fire whirl produced winds stronger than 140 mph, which is the equivalent of a strong EF-3 tornado.
For all the complex visual effects and scientific jargon the actors throw around, the underlying question the storm chasers in Twisters are trying to answer is simple: Is it possible to stop a tornado?
The plot follows main character Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) from her days as a tornado-chasing meteorology student to her time as a degreed meteorologist who gets roped back in to one more round of tracking storms—for the science. (Fans of the 1996 movie may snicker at this nod to Bill Paxton’s character Bill repeatedly saying “I’m not back” before hopping in his truck to chase a twister.)
Kate’s mission in life is to stop tornadoes before they can wreak death and destruction. Her research led her to attempt to launch a super-absorbent polymer—“like the ones they use in diapers,” one character notes—into a tornado in order to absorb the moisture and force the storm to shrivel up and die out.
It’s an admirable goal, but one made up for the big screen.
Folks have floated plenty of theories over the years on how to stop storms before they can cause damage downwind. Absorbing the moisture or, on the other end of the spectrum, “seeding” a storm to force it to rain are two potential options offered by hopeful storm stoppers. But the forces that generate hulking thunderstorms and tornadoes are too large for humans to directly disrupt in any meaningful way. The brief introduction of diaper-grade absorbent material certainly wouldn’t get the job done.
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Reliable technology, advanced warning, and emergency planning are the only surefire methods to ensure tornado safety. And ultimately, that’s always been the point of a Twister movie. Even as they take artistic license, they’re still largely about the importance of science in understanding storms to prepare for them. The rest is just the ride.
