A HUGE thank you to Alamo Drafthouse in Charlottesville and to everyone who stopped in last Friday for our Twisters event!
It was SO amazing to meet some of you last week for the big Twisters premier in Charlottesville! If you weren't able to make it, don't fret. We chatted about severe weather and what the movie gets right and wrong – which I'm also going to do in this special follow up edition of the newsletter right now!
Also, if you weren't able to make it to the event, we were able to record the Q&A session. It's over on our YouTube channel and linked below.
With that being said, some light spoilers for the movie are ahead, so if you haven't seen it yet and want to avoid any plot details, consider this your warning.
What does the movie get wrong?
Full disclosure – I was expecting to rip this movie apart. It's predecessor, the 1996 cult classic "Twister," is not exactly the most accurate from a meteorological standpoint... But "Twisters" actually gets a lot right! Nevertheless, there are some things that it, like any Hollywood movie would, takes some liberties on:
Radar is a real-time analysis tool: One of the first lines in the movie goes something like this – "Doppler shows storms firing in about 15 minutes." While there are predictive weather models, radar is not one of them... It's a real-time tool for tracking storms and other precipitation in the moment.
"Taming" tornadoes: A big plot point for this movie revolves around killing a thunderstorm, effectively squashing a tornado before it can cause widespread damage. In theory, disrupting a thunderstorm's updraft would essentially kill it. In "Twisters," they accomplish this by using a material to suck up all the moisture in a storm after converting it to rainfall (more on that in a moment). Again, a great idea that would maybe work... However, logistically, this would be a nightmare! Think of how many teams would need to be stationed across Tornado Alley or any location when a big outbreak is expected to make this happen. You'd also need a lot of diaper material (that's what they use in the film). And finally, say you could theoretically kill a tornado. That would not impact the overall, regional conditions (like warm, moist air and favorable wind shear conditions) leading to an eventful severe weather day. Long story short, great idea, but likely not anywhere remotely feasible.
- The dreaded highway overpass: At the beginning of the movie, Kate talks about how a highway overpass is the worst place to be during a tornado... and then she and her friends take shelter under one! Bad things happen, and maybe this should fall under the "right" category because of that... An overpass would essentially act as a wind tunnel during a tornado and is not the safest place to be. You'd be better off attempting to drive away from the tornado or lying down in a flat spot as far away from the roadway as possible if you can't drive.
What does the movie get right?
You'll probably notice the following list is longer than the one above! That's pretty surprising, but you can tell the filmmakers for "Twisters" at least made an attempt at getting some of the actual science into their movie. There are multiple things mentioned in the movie that at least have some basis in reality:
- Cloud seeding: Like I mentioned above, the stars of "Twisters" want to sap a storm of its moisture using the diaper material. To do this, they need to first convert that moisture into rainfall, which they do through "seeding" a storm with silver iodide. This substance is used in real life in a handful of locations, including North Dakota. Officials there use it to limit the severity of hailstorms.
- Storm jargon: The movie mentions CAPE, wind shear and temperature inversions – all actual variables meteorologists track to forecast severe weather. CAPE stands for convective available potential energy. It's essentially the fuel source for storms. Wind shear is the change of wind speed or direction as you move up in the atmosphere. It provides the rotation that separates tornadic supercells from regular thunderstorms. And finally, temperature inversions or "capping" are basically areas of cooler air above our heads that prevent warm, moist air from rising – the necessary precursor for storm development.
- Phased array radar technology (PAR): I had to look this one up, but this is on the leading edge of radar-related research. It essentially allows for meteorologists to look at one section of a storm, providing scans much faster than traditional radar tech. That could be massive in increasing the time between the issuance of a Tornado Warning and when it actually arrives.
- Fujiwhara effect: This one is truly wild... I'll leave it to the experts.
- The Enhanced-Fujita scale: The rating scale for the severity of tornadoes is based off of the damage they do on the ground.
- Much research into tornadoes is still needed: We've gotten pretty good at predicting what regions have the best chance of seeing severe weather on a particular day. More research is needed into why certain supercells develop a tornado when others don't. We also don't fully understand how climate change will impact tornado development.
All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by this movie! It could've been way worse on the science side (which, if you want to read more about tornadoes, this resource from the Storm Prediction Center has all the facts and knowledge you could possibly want to know), but I truly believe those making "Twisters" desired for it to have some level of accuracy. In fact, NOAA did consult with the movie's producers. And just from a good movie standpoint, I think "Twisters" checks all the boxes. It's a perfect summer blockbuster. Definitely go give it a watch if you haven't yet!
I don't think it'll be another 28 years before we get another installment, so we'll be ready to break down the next tornadic edition when it inevitably arrives!
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