Twisters asks if you can ‘tame’ a tornado. We have the answer

As in the previous film, Twisters’ protagonists want to help people affected by these highly destructive forces of nature. In the 1996 movie, Jo Harding, played by Helen Hunt, aimed to collect enough data to create an advanced warning system. In Twisters, the scientific stakes have escalated. Kate has a theory on how to destabilize or “tame” a tornado. But is such a thing possible?

Science News went to the movies with Maria Molina, a meteorologist at the University of Maryland in College Park, to find out how much of Twisters is grounded in reality and how much is getting swept up in stormy storytelling. We also spoke with Kevin Kelleher, retired director of the Global Systems Laboratory at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratories. He worked as the technical consultant on 1996’s Twister and spent more than two years as the tornado consultant for Twisters.

Ultimately, Twisters is a movie, so no one can realistically enter the theater thinking that this will be a perfect, scientifically accurate portrayal of weather phenomena that, in reality, we know so little about.

“Even after 30 years from the first movie to now, we really don’t know exactly how tornadoes form,” Kelleher says. “We know how the rotation starts in mid- and upper-level sections of the storm and works its way down to the surface. But we know now that that’s not the whole story.”

Molina still calls the movie fun, and she chuckled knowingly at some of the scientific elements she recognized along the way. “They did try to make quite a few things accurate,” she says.

Warning: Spoilers for Twisters below.

Brandon Perea as Boone in Twisters leans out of a truck window to see a nearby tornado.© Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

OK, so is it really possible to destabilize a tornado?

When we first meet Kate, she and her research team attempt to tame a tornado by releasing a polyacrylate chemical into the tornado’s funnel. According to Kate’s theory, the chemical, a type of polymer, would absorb the moisture in the air that serves as fuel for the tornado, causing it to die down.

“I think that was something that maybe, to me, was sort of making me cringe,” Molina says.

Kelleher admits that this is the most fantastical plot point of the movie. However, he explains that there is a basis to the idea. Certain polyacrylates are superabsorbent polymers that can hold up to 1,000 times their weight in water. In theory, if you injected enough of the polymer into the tornado’s funnel, it would absorb moisture and the water would then fall to the ground, thus having some influence on the storm.

“Of course, it’s a matter of scale,” he says. “You can’t hardly imagine getting enough of this chemical in the storm to make a difference.”

Naturally, a modified version of Kate’s experiment works in the third act to save the day, but the Twisters characters acknowledge that their research still has a long way to go. Javi tells Kate that people may doubt her success and claim the tornado died on its own or tapered out due to a different extreme weather event.

“Scientifically, that’s what I would say, right?” Molina says. “I’d say, ‘You don’t have a control tornado to ensure that we understand every single bit of the dynamics in it.’”

The movie scientists use radar to make 3-D models of tornadoes. Is that realistic?

For most of the film, Javi and the team use phased array radars, or PARs, to capture scans of the tornadoes (SN: 9/4/23). They triangulate three PARs around each tornado to create a 3-D model so they can better understand how tornadoes form, which in turn leads to a better ability to predict storm formation and dissipation.

According to Molina, this was spot on.

“That was really cool,” Molina says. “So from NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, they have field crews that go out and get scans using [this] radar … [and] when they’re trying to capture a supercell in the field, they do deploy three around it to get that full perspective.”

Twisters obviously plays up the actual risk factor, according to Kelleher. In the movie, Javi’s team of researchers brings the radars “exceptionally close to the storm,” placing them on the ground to get accurate data. In reality, most of these field radars would be much larger than how they are portrayed in the movie, allowing them to sit farther away from the storm, and would remain attached to the trucks.

Here’s the trailer for Twisters that briefly features a “firenado.”

What’s the deal with the fire tornado seen in the trailer? Could that actually happen?

A fire tornado, or “firenado,” is featured briefly in the film, and unlike the infamous “sharknado” of TV-movie fame, it “really is not a stretch,” Kelleher says (SN: 9/9/18)

“I actually liked that they put that in there,” Molina says. “In California, there’s been quite a few fires over the last several years. And there were reports of a firenado occurring as a result of the heat.”

Kelleher also says that wildfires can form their own thunderstorms that may have the characteristics of supercell thunderstorms. Such storms have a strong, persistent updraft called a mesocyclone that can lead to tornadoes.

How does this movie handle the issue of climate change?

Despite being about extreme weather phenomena, Twisters never mentions the phrase “climate change.” Kelleher explains that the studio wanted to sensitize folks to the risks “without being preachy.”

Also, researchers don’t quite know what to anticipate regarding tornadoes and climate change. According to Molina, it’s unclear if there will be more tornadoes in the future due to changing climate conditions. The issue continually circles back to a lack of data.

Still, decades’ worth of changing trends in tornado behavior offer some clues (SN: 10/18/18).

“The trends are that the traditional Tornado Alley is expanding,” Kelleher says. “It’s not really leaving the traditional Tornado Alley, but it is expanding eastward into, you know, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama. And those tornadoes are looking and getting bigger.”

How do scientists feel about self-taught storm chasers?

Unlike its 1996 predecessor, Twisters shows storm chasing from two very different perspectives: the professionally trained research scientists and the self-taught enthusiasts in the field.

“With our phones, now everybody has ready access to radar data and most of the data that the meteorologists have, and so tornado chasing has become a huge thing,” Kelleher says.

Molina enjoyed seeing how many enthusiasts there were at the gas stations and hotels the protagonists visited and says that is pretty accurate to what the field looks like now.

“If someone is out chasing for fun and just because of their own curiosity, that’s, you know, good for them,” Molina says. “They’re capturing video. We can use that video. We’ve learned a lot about tornadoes through video.”

Too many chasers in the field, however, can cause issues. A common complaint from researchers that Molina and Kelleher both point out is congested roads or traffic jams that can prevent scientists from setting up their field equipment or arriving on the scene on time. Molina mentions how this can sometimes lead to some of the unsafe driving Twisters portrayed between the two main chaser groups as they compete to see who arrived first at a storm.

Kelleher also points out that the movie depicts the actions of people who, he believes, get too close to the storms and put themselves at risk.

“These are exceptionally dangerous forces of nature you don’t want to mess with at all,” Kelleher says. “So do not try to think you can drive into a tornado and survive it. It’s just not doable.”