How Twisters Brought the Science of Storm Chasing to the Big Screen

In this edition of Today in Science, a professional storm chaser and meteorologist talks about his role in advising Hollywood for "Twisters" and the awe-inspiring experience of chasing tornadoes.

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—Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor

Real-life Storm Chasers

A meteorologist hired as a science advisor for Twisters, a sequel to the 1996 tornado-chasers cult classic Twister, says that the new movie’s makers were keen to latch onto cutting-edge technology that's actually used in the field. Sean Waugh and his colleagues at the National Severe Storm Laboratory, along with Kevin Kelleher, an advisor for the 1996 movie and former deputy director of the NSSL, served “as a touchstone for all aspects of the movie’s realism,” reports Max Springer, a AAAS Mass Media Fellow this summer at Scientific American. While visiting the NSSL, the Twisters crew studied real equipment, radar imagery and other procedures at the lab to create props and some of the movie’s narrative, sound and visual elements.?

What the experts say: “The entire production was a concerted effort to ensure the movie’s authenticity. The whole team relied on me and Kevin Kelleher to maintain that authenticity,” says Waugh, who spoke with Scientific American while out in his specialized storm-chasing truck.

Nifty nugget: Storm-chasing meteorologists really do rely on gut feelings at times to forecast storms, Waugh says, as Bill Paxton’s character did in the original Twister. “People joke that meteorologists are wrong all the time—but we’re trying to predict the future here! I ask anybody to show me what their March Madness bracket looks like on any given year and tell me if they can predict the future.”

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