The movie ‘Twisters’ has good tornado science, but some problems, experts say

Since tornadoes in Twisters it came with a lack of warning that worried Richard Smith. This was a somewhat personal matter.

Smith is the warning coordinator meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norman, Okla., and all of those things in the movie hit home. Rest assured, he said, in real life watches and warnings would have been issued.

Additionally, he questioned the film’s portrayal of those who live in an international nexus of tornadoes and are more than familiar with them. “The Oklahomans seemed kind of scared and didn’t know what to do,” he said.

Despite these warnings and a key plot element that tornado specialists found particularly troubling, he and other meteorologists gave Twisters — The summer blockbuster released 28 years after the original Twister – a good grade for scientific accuracy, at least a solid B.

Smith acknowledged a certain bias. Meteorologists at the Norman complex, the NOAA chaos center that also houses the Storm Prediction Center and National Severe Storms Laboratory, were heavily involved in educating cast and crew members.

” READ MORE: Norman, Okla., is a national storm forecasting center

Said Smith, who led a class for 18 of them in May 2023 and even made an appearance in the film, “They came in very motivated and very interested,” especially Daisy Edgar-Jones.

‘Twisters,’ a summary of the vortex plot

Edgar-Jones, who plays Oklahoma native and storm chaser Kate Carter, pursues a quixotic dream of extinguishing tornadoes by releasing a chemical concoction into their vortices. Don Quixote would have had better luck against windmills, say real tornado experts. After her boyfriend and two others are killed during a chase, she takes a job with NOAA in New York working in a weather service office. We’ll come back to that.

She is later lured into stalking during a large explosion in Oklahoma, and during a frenzied week of tornado activity, she is joined by Glen Powell, a former rodeo star turned stalker named Tyler Owens, who seduces her him to resume the tornado chase. – inhalation.

Somehow, embedded in the ensuing maelstrom is the story of a kissless love triangle. (Maybe those 200 mph winds killed the mood.)

What the ‘Twisters’ had right

Although for the most part the tornadic winds were extremely kind to Edgar-Jones’ makeup (25 people were listed on the makeup staff) and Powell’s shirt, the depictions of what happens on the ground when a monster spins a path the destruction impressed Kevin. Kelleher, former deputy director of the storm lab.

“I think they were really accurate,” said Kelleher, who worked with the writers for more than two years, “maybe a little bit exaggerated.” Kelleher, now retired, was also involved with the original Twister.

The sequel was superior to the original meteorologically, Smith said: “The terminology, the jargon is much more accurate. The homework, I think, paid off.”

He quoted a scene in Twisters in which an eerily fiery Doppler radar image “reflects pretty accurately what stage the storm is in,” he said.

However, a Doppler reference was the source of a gaffe early in the film. “There were some hiccups,” Kelleher said.

” READ MORE: It was Ted Fujita who figured out how to rank the strength of tornadoes by analyzing photos

What ‘Twisters are wrong.

During a morning scene, a follower notes, “Doppler doesn’t show a storm until this afternoon.”

That line resulted in a high “catch-up” factor among meteorologists, Smith said. Doppler reveals. It is not in the prediction business. It can pick up signatures of tornadoes in storms, maybe 15 to 20 minutes ahead, which started the warnings.

Smith is sure that in the climactic scene in which Kate and Tyler are attending a rodeo interrupted by a monster tornado, the warnings would have been issued before all the iPhone alarms went off. “That rodeo would have been canceled,” he said. “But then you wouldn’t have any movies.”

After the disasters, without any credentials, Kate, Tyler and other people get free access to the disaster sites, ostensibly to help. In reality, access would be strictly limited for security reasons – think live wires, weakened building materials and robberies. “They’re locked in pretty tight,” Smith said.

” READ MORE: Forty years ago, a deadly tornado hit Pennsylvania. Could it happen again?

As for Kate’s career at NOAA as a weather forecaster in Manhattan, a scene in which Smith appears, NOAA has no such office in New York City. It’s on Long Island.

What Most Worried Meteorologists in ‘Twisters’

Kate and Tyler’s scheme to eradicate tornadoes by dousing them with massive amounts of water-absorbing sodium polyacrylate and silver iodide, which is used in cloud seeding, was a source of considerable concern among scientists.

“Tornadoes and the storms that form them are massive, extremely complex systems that contain immeasurable amounts of energy,” says Sean Waugh, research meteorologist with NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, in a YouTube video.

Even if such an antidote did exist, Waugh said, “the side effects of these chemicals or forces are unknown and would likely cause as much or more damage than the tornadoes themselves.”

But in consultation with the screenwriters, Kelleher said he was told that including that plot element was “non-negotiable”.

So he worked with the writers to come up with a “theoretical” scenario in which he could have been effective.

After the tornado makes contact with an oil refinery and changes to a fire-breathing EF5, Kate releases the mixture into the rotor and it dissipates.

“That was my get out of jail free card,” Kelleher said. In the film, the explosion raises doubts about whether it was Kate and Tyler’s genius or the encounter with the refinery that was the undoing of the twist, a plot element Kelleher suggested. “They kept it there, and I was happy about that,” he said.

Harold E. Brooks, senior research scientist at the storm lab, said he would have been more comfortable if the script had declared the experiment a complete failure. “I’m scared to death that people will try to do that thing,” he said.

Director Lee Isaac Chung has been criticized for the film’s failure to address climate change. He said that his goal was not to save the world. “I just don’t feel like movies should be message-oriented,” he said in an interview with CNN.

How a warming planet is affecting tornadoes is one of the many uncertainties of climate change, NOAA researchers say.

” READ MORE: The number of tornadoes has increased in Pennsylvania

While the number of tornadoes with winds of at least 80 mph has not changed much, they are occurring on fewer days, but the number of days with large outbreaks has increased, NOAA says. More occur in fall and winter, but less in spring and summer.

NOAA’s take: “So far, most research stops short of linking historical changes in tornado behavior to a warming climate.”

All scientific quibbles aside, said Smith of Twisters: “It’s a movie.

“It was a lot of fun.”