When 'Twister' debuted nearly 30 years ago, it showcased some pretty new science. A lot has changed over the decades ahead of the sequel, 'Twisters.'
Warner Bros; Getty Images; IMDb; Alyssa Powell/BI
When the original "Twister" movie debuted in 1996, its super-sized, cow-spinning tornadoes captivated audiences. So did the daredevil researchers, ready to chase down and even hop in front of storms for the sake of science.
Now, there's a sequel, "Twisters," which, in some ways, shows just how far tornado science has come in the last few decades. How we model, rate, and track tornados have all changed.
Warning times have increased and computing power has made tornado models more accurate, Jana Houser, a meteorologist at Ohio State University, told Business Insider. She helped a "Twisters" film crew scout locations and find storm footage for the new movie.
Scientists today have a better idea of how tornadoes form, but these destructive storms are still highly unpredictable and forecasting exactly where and when a storm will form is an ongoing area of research.
Kevin Thiel/OU CIMMS/NOAA NSSL
The big showpiece of the original "Twister" was Dorothy, a drum containing hundreds of sensors that got sucked up by a tornado, returning tons of data on the vortex's interior.
Dorothy was based on a real device, TOTO, that never got unleashed inside a tornado. Even if it had, "we didn't have the bandwidth to know where each one of those little sensors was," Harold Brooks, a senior researcher with the National Severe Storms Laboratory, said.
The new movie "Twisters" highlights some of the latest technology meteorologists rely on, featuring a portable version of a phased array radar system, similar to the much larger one real scientists at the NSSL use to track storm evolution and predict if one will produce hail or rain.
Scientists started to use radar more frequently closely after May 3, 1999, when a giant, 85-minute tornado killed 36 people in Oklahoma. The storm was the first use of the term "tornado emergency," the National Weather Service's highest alert level. The deadly storm was just one of 74 that hit Oklahoma and Kansas in a 21-hour period.
Today, data collected from more frequent radar scans and new technologies is combined with high computing power to produce more accurate models of tornadoes. "We can really study the processes that drive their formation, that drive their evolution, and ultimately even their demise," Houser said.
Yet there are still a lot of questions about how and why tornadoes form. It's one thing that hasn't changed between the original and new movies: forecasting is still tricky.
OAR/Global Systems Lab, NWS/Warning Decision Training Division
In the old "Twister," the scientists' holy grail was increasing the time between warnings and tornado strikes, hoping to increase warning time from three to 15 minutes. (Currently, the lead time is typically between 8 and 18 minutes, according to Weather.com.)
The new film spotlights a different, but very real, problem: Over half of tornado warnings are false alarms, which can lead people to ignore them altogether. "It's like a 'boy who cried wolf' kind of a scenario," Houser said.
The reason there are so many incorrect warnings is because "tornadoes and, to a degree, the storms that produce them are very sensitive to incredibly small-scale details in the environment," Houser said. Wind, temperature, moisture, and terrain can all affect whether one forms.
The way we rate tornadoes has also changed. One of the biggest errors in the old "Twister" was that the team of scientists rated the tornadoes on the Fujita's 0-5 scale as the storms formed. But this isn't how it happens in reality. The NWS only rates a tornado after a damage survey, and not in the moment.
Plus in 2007, the NWS started using an updated version called the Enhanced Fujita Scale. This newer scale better correlates wind speed and the resulting damage by incorporating more types of buildings and objects like trees and poles, according to Weather.com.
HUM Images/Getty Images
"Twisters" director Lee Isaac Chung deliberately avoided mentioning climate change in the new film. "I just don't feel like films are meant to be message-oriented," he told CNN.
However, that doesn't mean climate change isn't a factor when it comes to real storms and their destruction.
"There is definitely evidence to suggest we're seeing increased variability from year to year," Houser said.
Based on records stretching back over 70 years, there seem to be fewer days with tornadoes each year. That means the same number of storms are packed into a shorter timespan.
At the same time, where tornadoes strike is shifting. There are fewer in the Central US's "Tornado Alley" and an increase in the Southeast in states like Alabama, Kentucky, and Mississippi.
The change in landscape makes these storms different, too. Houser describes them as "uber charged, creating these larger scale, dynamic events that just create lots and lots of tornadoes."
Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Amblin Entertainment
"We've seen an increase in the number of tornadoes in any given year," Houser said. But that's not because more tornadoes are occurring.
"There are simply more people out there observing them and reporting them," she said.
The original film sparked a surge in interest in severe weather. More storm chasers began tracking tornadoes. The University of Oklahoma's meteorology program almost doubled in the years following the movie's release.
Since then, technology has made it easier for these enthusiasts to access storm data. It "enables everybody to basically look at the weather radar apps and see, 'Hey, where's the storm?'" Houser said.
If the new "Twisters" film has a similar effect to its predecessor, it could inspire a new generation of researchers to answer some of these storms' biggest, remaining mysteries like why two very similar storms will produce a tornado in one instance and not the other.
