‘Twisters’ just realistic enough to recall storm-chasing memories

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It was May 22, 2008. I was on my fourth of what would become 14 trips with the Hokie Storm Chasers, serving as a co-leader of the team of college students mostly from Virginia Tech tracking and observing severe storms in the Plains states of the central U.S.

We had experienced what is still one of the team’s most epic days, observing multiple fast-moving supercells in central Kansas, producing half a dozen or more tornadoes, the count a little fuzzy due to abundant dirt being sucked into the vacuum updrafts of the rotating storms, choking visibility. We had danced around these dangerous storms while staying outside of heavy rain, hail, and any danger from tornadoes. We thought our day was over, but a new storm, supercharged with lightning, formed just south of our WaKeeney, Kansas, hotel.

Current weather highlights

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Some potential for a tropical system to develop near the Bahamas that might affect the East Coast next week.

Tornado on July 24 with 9-mile-long path confirmed in Halifax County .

We rolled south and took up position on a dirt road to observe a tornado cross the road in front of us within two miles to our west. Our position was perfect for not only a visually intriguing intercept with a golden sunset background, but seemingly for a quick withdrawal to safety. But our escape routes became blocked by other chase vehicles, and a rear-flank downdraft laden with 80 mph wind gusts, sideways-propelled hail and some larger debris like tumbleweeds whipped around the backside of the departing tornado and slammed our vans before we could get away.

We inched back onto a two-lane highway and slowly puttered through the sudden pitch-black darkness as wind and rain absorbed our position, chunks of hail banging the outside of the vans. We finally found an eastbound gravel road to turn away from the storm and within a few hundred yards we were out of the chaos.

When we returned to our hotel, we found an alarming scene. The windows of the lobby had been broken, the convenience store across the road had been badly damaged, and student chasers with another college team were nursing injuries they had sustained elsewhere in WaKeeney when a road sign had been hurled through the windows of their van.

This was the only experience I’ve ever had in storm chasing that came even remotely close to the mayhem that is almost constant in this summer’s hit movie “Twisters.”

Don’t drive into a tornado!

“Twisters” is billed as a “standalone sequel” to the 1996 hit “Twister,” neither a follow-up nor a remake, starring different actors playing new characters in a presumably decades-forward future time from the original.

“Twister” was a cultural touchstone widely cited for igniting the meteorology careers of many Millennial-age weather enthusiasts, despite its very loose grasp on science and sometimes laughably inaccurate portrayals of tornadoes and storm chasing. “Twisters” is a hefty second volume with occasional hat tips to the original.

“Twisters” is just realistic enough to stir reminiscence in me about what it was like to be on the Plains chasing the wind. My last trip was in 2018, as I finally bowed out with more family commitments and less stamina for the exhaustive road trip, though I haven’t ruled out returning for at least one more trip in the future.

(Disclosure: I am presently employed full time by Virginia Tech in communications for the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. My paid position does not include any work for the meteorology program at Virginia Tech.)

The new movie captures the Plains storm day ambience and some of the quirky subculture that undergirds storm chasing, though, of course, exaggerated in classic Hollywood style. (The movie, however, substantially underplays the multitude of chasers pursuing storms on prime days, something we’ll get back to later in this piece.)

What isn’t realistic: Repeatedly driving directly into tornadoes, intentionally, in vans and long-bed pickups. The main characters in the movie should all be dead within 45 minutes of the opening credits. But this is Hollywood, and “Twisters,” even if not perfectly scientific (I would argue it’s closer to the mark than the original, at least with terminology) is certainly entertaining without a single sex scene and only infrequent and mild profanity. (There is considerable blood, though.)

Also unrealistic: The frequency of tornadoes, all in easily recognizable rope, cone or wedge formations. There are no “cap busts,” when a layer of warmer air aloft keeps storms from developing even when all the other parameters seem favorable. There are no storms that the chasers engage that don’t produce tornadoes, which often happens even on outbreak days. And the movie skips over the all-day waits for storms to develop that are pretty much expected even on active chase days. Chasers throwing frisbees at a park or chowing down at a truck stop food court is boring movie fare.

Most of the approximately 30 tornadoes I’ve seen in my life — six in Arkansas before I moved to Virginia  in late 1999, and two dozen or so more since with the Hokie Storm Chasers — have been at a distance of 5 or more miles and many have involved marginally visible ground swirls or incomplete condensation funnels, things that might not even look like a tornado to a spectator not involved in meteorology and certainly wouldn’t measure up to what Hollywood has produced in “Twister,” “Twisters,” or even the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz.”

A central though scientifically dubious theme of “Twisters” involves efforts to dissipate tornadoes, which is simply beyond the scope of ongoing research or the practical ability of modern technology.  To some criticism, climate change is not a theme of “Twisters” — perhaps that is for the best, as the connections between a warming climate and the frequency and intensity of tornadoes are not as direct or as well understood as certain other events like droughts and flooding, as various factors that form tornadoes are affected in opposite directions by higher temperatures.

Student chasers fill crucial roles

“Twisters” centers around Kate Carter, a brilliant scientist with an atmospheric sixth sense, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones (she’s British but pulls off rural Oklahoma native pretty well), and Tyler Owens, a tornado-wrangling cowboy chaser and social media star played by Glen Powell. Tyler has drawn many comparisons, perhaps intended by the movie makers, to well-known real-life storm chaser Reed Timmer.

The character of Kate Carter immediately brought to mind my friend Kathryn Prociv, a Virginia Tech graduate who is now a weather producer and mostly behind-the-scenes meteorologist assisting Al Roker at NBC News in New York (similarly named Kate also transplants to New York in the movie). From 2010 to 2015, Kathryn and I figured we rode 30,000 miles on storm chases together as she went from being a student to a returning co-leader, and she still takes a couple weeks off from television almost every year to chase storms today.

I would get in trouble for leaving people out if I tried to list all the influential and interesting roles in weather that young people I have chased with have taken, but suffice it to say many have filled crucial roles tracking weather in National Weather Service offices, the military and private enterprise.

Dave Carroll, Virginia Tech meteorology instructor, has been taking young people to the Plains looking for storms for over 30 years, originally high school students when he was a teacher at Pulaski High School, then a mixed group of high school and college students from various universities (principally Virginia Tech and North Carolina-Asheville), and later almost exclusively Virginia Tech meteorology students as a field course.

Carroll likes to say that everyone is getting a two-way trip when they take a storm chase, and he has a deep commitment to safety while guiding future meteorologists in tracking and observing severe storms.

His commitment to safety has led him to move the trip from May, prime tornado season in the Plains, to the latter half of June, when the weather pattern sometimes tilts more to stable summer heat in the Southern Plains around Oklahoma but can often still be quite active for severe storms especially just east of the Rockies and in the Northern Plains.

The principal reason for the move is that the crowds of chasers pursuing storms have simply become too large for his team to be able to maneuver three vans safely during the peak time of May, especially whenever the severe risk has been near Oklahoma City or Wichita.

Storm chasing in popular culture and social media is a major driver in the rapid growth of people pursuing storms, and there’s a good chance “Twisters” will only add to that swarm.

Carroll has also always emphasized positive interaction with local law enforcement and rescue groups — many police officers and firefighters in small Plains towns have peeked into our vans over the years to get the latest radar update and counsel on what the storms are doing nearby — but the hordes of chasers on some of the most active days can be a hazard that overwhelms and frustrates local authorities who need to focus on storm spotting and rescue operations.

Yet “Twisters” will also inspire Generation Zers to pursue careers in meteorology, unraveling mysteries of the atmosphere and saving lives through better forecasting and more precise and timely warnings.

Like with the movie itself, we have to take the good with the bad.

See also: “ Why Virginia isn’t a tornado alley .”

Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley.

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