The Science Behind Twisters, According to a Meteorologist

Warning: This post contains spoilers Twisted.

It has been almost 30 years since Twisted hit theaters and changed the disaster movie game forever. Thanks to groundbreaking visual effects, the palpable chemistry between leads Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, and the world’s enduring fascination with tornadoes, Jan De Bont’s 1996 box office hit still stands as a gem of the genre.

Now, Twisteda spiritual sequel to director Lee Isaac Chung’s original (Minari), is preparing for what is expected to be a US$55 million opening weekend. Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate and Glen Powell as Tyler, two rival storm chasers in Tornado Alley who begin to realize that their passions overlap in more ways than one, Twisted builds on its predecessor’s proposal to collect data from inside a tornado, speculating on the possibility of “taming” one of the destructive funnel storms.

“In the original TwistedThe idea of ​​putting these Dorothy sensor balls in a tornado is completely science fiction, but it inspired a generation of people to want to do scientific research on storms,” ​​Chung told Hollywood news reporter. “And with this movie, the effort that Kate is making to see if she can stop the dynamics of a tornado, that’s also based on a lot of science fiction. We’re just theorizing, and it’s definitely not something we want people to do. we’re doing, but we wanted the film to pay homage to science and research and drive big ideas out there.”

To try to find out how realistic the plot of Twisted actually it is, TIME spoke to Michael Segerchief meteorologist at 2News Oklahoma KJRH on the science of tornadoes, the likelihood of being surprised and the culture around storm chasing.

See more information: The 25 Best Disaster Movies of All Time, Ranked

TIME: Scientifically, how plausible is the idea of ​​taming a tornado?

Seger: From what we know now, not much. This is the only part where they ventured into science fiction. Everything else about the film I thought was right. This doesn’t mean that in the future we won’t be able to tame a tornado in some way. But right now, this is more science fiction than real science.

Would Kate’s method of destroying a tornado by feeding it polymers work in theory, if not necessarily in practice?

How a thunderstorm works, especially supercells, is that you have your updraft – that’s where the air rises during the storm – and then you have your downdraft – that’s where all the precipitation falls and you get hail. And what’s different about a supercell compared to a normal summer storm is that the updraft is tilted. Thus, all precipitation falls to the side, but the updraft is able to sustain itself. This is how he manages to maintain his organization for a few hours at a time, without isolating himself. What drives a supercell is the upward motion in the storm. It’s ingesting this warm, humid air. When you chase these storms, if you sit in the inlet region, you can literally feel the storm sucking in the air. You will have air rushing behind you. With the strongest storms, the inflow can be sucked in at over 50-60 miles per hour. Sometimes it’s incredibly powerful. And so what they’re trying to do in the film is cut off the input stream. It’s like, hey, if we can get the updraft to precipitate, the air will start flowing downward, stop the updraft, and therefore kill the tornado.

Now this can also cause repercussions and you may have just created a incredible microexplosion. If you have a storm at 60,000 feet and all of a sudden the air starts to collapse and you have a huge explosion when it hits the ground, it spreads out and you have a lot of wind and then you have outflow that could generate more storms downstream . So in theory, you could try to do something like this, but at the moment, I just don’t think it’s possible. And they would have to do a lot more than just have a little trailer full [of polymers].

Are people really capable of naturally sensing tornadoes like Kate?

This is definitely more Hollywood than real. They kind of do the same thing in the first one Twisted with Bill Paxton. I chase many storms. And I always say there’s an art to it. But we don’t really know why one storm will produce a tornado and another won’t. There are certain things we can look for: what environment it is in, if there are other storms nearby that could interfere. But ultimately, when you have Storm A and Storm B in a seemingly identical atmospheric environment and one produces a long-track EF-4 tornado and another gets a tornado warning but doesn’t actually do anything, we don’t know really why this happens. There’s something else going on that we can’t figure out.

Would Tyler’s truck bolted to the ground prevent him from being blown up?

I think they got that premise from the TIV, the Tornado Intercept Vehicle, which was created by Sean Casey. He did the [Tornado Alley] IMAX film. But it was like a heavily armored tank that would drive spikes into the ground and was designed to fall over to limit airflow underneath. If you were there in a normal vehicle, it would be damaged. Things would be flying through the windows. Therefore, bolting can help keep the vehicle on the ground, but the debris is the most damaging part. It would probably be destroyed.

Could so many tornadoes really happen in one week?

There are cases where the pattern will set and we will have several days of severe weather. So it absolutely can happen. It’s not something that happens very often, but it can.

Is storm chasing culture really that intense in Tornado Alley?

There is definitely a big culture of storm chasing. It’s hard to describe, but they tried to portray it in the film. Like when they pull up to the gas station and all the stalkers are there, that’s 100% accurate. Because a lot of times on the day of the chase, in the morning you try to pick a target area. Obviously you don’t know exactly where a storm will go, but you’ll circle, say, a 50-mile radius just to get an idea. And then what’s going to happen is a lot of hunters will start heading to those spots and you’ll usually just find a place to park and wait. That’s the big thing about storm chasing that a lot of people don’t realize, it’s a lot of sitting around and waiting. But most of the time you’re gathered with other hunters, so there’s a bit of camaraderie there. The scenes where they are fighting on the road are definitely more Hollywood, but the reunion and everyone looking at the data together is realistic.

Was there anything else that caught your attention in the film?

I was so impressed with the computer graphics. They did really well modeling these tornadoes in the film. In the scenes where they are driving through storms, it looks incredibly close to reality. You could tell they worked with storm chasers and consulted meteorologists to really get the move right. They just did a fantastic job.