20 things wrong with Twisters
I had to go and watch the movie for the fourth time.
Twisters was one of the sources of my passion for severe weather (“if you feel it, chase it!”), but as I watched it again this morning, I decided to write down 20 things they got wrong. I’m now going to tell them to you. If you haven’t seen the movie, go and see it because this has spoilers.
1. There is no base on the storms. The only time there’s a base is when you see the mesocyclone, and the base is still pretty high.
2. The storms have no structure. They are just rain clouds; they do not have the anvil shape like supercells do.
3. Javi should be able to see that opening tornado, because another van should be closer to the field one.
4. When they come out of the car to run to the overpass (which is a terrible shelter, by the way), there is a decent shelter right nearby: ditch.
5. In the National Weather Service (NWS) scene the teacher said that Brooklyn suffered an EF-1 in 2022. That’s wrong. The last tornado to hit Brooklyn was an EF-2 in 2007.
6. There is not a NWS station in Manhattan. I’ve been to NYC twice, and there was no NWS station. There is one near Long Island though.
7. The driving is way too reckless. If a real storm chaser drove like that in real life this would happen.
8. The scene where the EF-2 rips apart the wind turbine is wrong. It takes EF-4 strength to rip apart wind turbines, and it does it totally different. It’s hard to describe, so if you want to see how go to Reed Timmer’s YouTube channel.
9. Back to the opening tornado scene: I honestly think the NWS would rate that tornado EF-3 because it didn’t hit any towns, I’m backing this up with the El Reno 2013 EF-3: It had recorded wind speeds of 300 mph but because the EF scale is based on damage, it was rated EF-3. Witness:
10. If you’re not one for physics, skip to number 11. (But you should be into physics! Physics is fun!) So: Tyler Owen’s truck. Its shape makes the surface area a lot wider, but there are no flaps to make sure the vertical winds don’t get under the truck, so even the drills would not keep it secured. Even if his drills were enough, all the debris would just destroy the car. (It would actually be kind of funny to just see two drills just sticking out of the ground.)
11. The twins in the movie look like they are from the same mesocyclone, which means that it’s actually a multi-vortex tornado. They also can’t spread apart like that and become two different tornadoes.
The drills on Tyler Owen’s truck are way too slow to deploy. The truck would be airborne before they touch the ground.
The surprise tornado. Everyone would already be in their shelters, because there are 13 minutes of warning lead time—not two.
Sheltering in a pool. I can see where Kate is coming from on that one, but debris flooding would definitely be a problem.
There is way too much moisture in a supercell—that even diapers couldn’t absorb all of it, as they joke in the film—and the tornado would stay on the ground. So you can’t kill (sorry “tame”) a tornado.
Silver iodide will make snow, not rain because it clumps together with water and makes ice, and the ice clumps together with more water making snow. But please please please do not try it because it is very toxic to the environment—and to you.
Tornado fire. This will not work for the same reason why you can’t kill a tornado: All the moisture will put out the fire before it gets strong.
If you see any pictures of water towers after tornadoes, that’s because they are usually pretty well built: They will just be standing up strong with all the debris around them. In Twisters, though, the tower gets mauled. I thing the reason they made that happen is because they saw the damage to the water tower in Rolling Fork, but that water tower wasn’t very well built.
A movie theater is an OK place to shelter, but I think the better place in the movie theater would be the bathroom: It doesn’t have windows and is a lot smaller.
In the last tornado scene Tyler Owens is very wet when he closes the theater doors, which must mean the tornado is rain-wrapped. But then Universal Studios is like, “NO! It’s gonna be clearly visible!”. And here I am, just getting mad about it.
I still love the movie, and will surely watch it again.Contact me by replying to this email, or in the comments. Stay safe!
Ill probably do one for "Twister" too