How Hollywood helped inspire a new generation of meteorologists
A ticket from a 1996 screening of the movie, “Twister,” superimposed over a tornado blowing through a large field. (Image credit: NOAA Heritage)
This summer, a new blockbuster features severe weather as the ultimate super-villain. Tornadoes and tornado researchers play huge roles in the script of the new movie, called “Twisters,” with a young woman facing both her fear of storms and her fear of miscalculating data as she follows dangerous cloud formations alongside a brash and handsome celebrity storm chaser.
The movie, released by Universal Studios on July 19, 2024, is a kind of homage to the 1996 movie, “Twister.” The original also mixed science, romance and bad weather, with a plot focused on two storm-chasing researchers on the brink of divorce who are forced to work together to collect novel data inside a tornado.
The 1996 movie has become a classic, and is sometimes credited for increasing enrollment at some meteorology schools such as the one at the University of Oklahoma.
Keli Pirtle, a public affairs officer supporting NOAA’s tornado experts says that the first “Twister” movie influenced a lot of people’s careers. Nationally, bachelors degrees in meteorology increased by 47% from 1994 to 2004, and more than doubled by 2007. (Years later, critics even expressed concern that there weren’t enough jobs for all the fresh graduates.) offsite link
Some speculate that the new movie may eventually have the same impact as the 1996 movie.
Pirtle, who grew up in Norman, Oklahoma, was early in her own communications career when the first movie arrived in the mid 1990s. A few years later she would transition into the job supporting NOAA in Norman, including the National Severe Storms Laboratory and the Storm Prediction Center, helping communicate about the science there ever since. Last spring, she was excited to work with the film crew who asked to learn about tornado research and forecasting and the people who do that work in real life.
Truth versus science fiction
One thing is certain, mentioning both movies can bring a hail storm of criticism from actual weather experts.
Some critiques are major and serious. Those who work to prevent tragic deaths from severe weather and help to build actual storm forecasting systems, for example, don’t like to see or hear any bad advice about riding out storms in risky locations like barns filled with huge blades or underpasses on highways.
Other critiques are minor, along the lines of wondering how a scientist doing field research for days in the dusty Great Plains region of the U.S. could possibly keep their shirt as white and bright as the shirt Helen Hunt wore throughout “Twister.”
“I knew there were many things the first movie didn’t get right and I was hoping this time we could infuse a bit more of our real science into the story,” Pirtle says. “Not to say there aren’t some things that are true science fiction this time around. I didn’t actually work on the script! But everyone we interacted with who was involved in the production — from the producers and director to the art and props departments to the cast — wanted as much accuracy as possible, even in the small details.” This included everything from NOAA lanyards in the forecast office scene to replicas of actual research instruments used on the vehicles.
But truth be told, there are also plenty of people currently working in meteorology who also admit to a kind of love-hate relationship with “Twister.” In fact, some will even tell you that the 1996 movie, for all of its faults and scientific gaffes, actually inspired their own real-life careers in severe storm research.
“There’s a kind of myth that you can have a career as a storm chaser,” says Pirtle. “Most people do it as a hobby. But, you CAN have a career as a meteorologist who studies them.”
In spring of 2024, as the promos for the new tornado movie hit the airwaves, Pirtle asked her coworkers to describe their relationship with the original “Twister” from 1996. Below are some of the answers.
“Growing up in Oklahoma City, I really wanted to be an extra in ‘Twister’ during middle school but I fell short of the age cut off. ‘Twister’ was one of a number of things that solidified my interest in meteorology before becoming part of one of the largest incoming classes of meteorology students at The University of Oklahoma in 2001. Many classmates still work in the Norman weather community to this day.” - Larry Hopper, Radar Research and Development Division chief, NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory
“‘Twister’ came out right as I was starting to get more interested in weather late in middle school. Of course it's easy to highlight the scientific inaccuracies, but it was an exciting movie that stoked my interest at an impressionable time when I was just starting to explore different interests at a more academic level. - Jeff Snyder, Ph.D., research meteorologist, NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory
“I first saw ‘Twister’ when I was about six years old and was in awe at the power of the weather exhibited in that movie. Literally from that moment on I was set on becoming a meteorologist. I held to that aspiration all the way through childhood and now here I am working with NSSL!” - Dan Stechman, research scientist, working with NSSL at the NOAA/University of Oklahoma Cooperative Institute, CIWRO
“A little known story about me and my wife Jane (who works as a contractor for the Radar Operations Center) is that we were featured in the July 14th, 1996 edition of the Sunday Times magazine, an insert to the London Times. This would have coincided with the European release of the movie ‘Twister.’ We took their reporter storm chasing and he came up with: “Riders on the storm – The people who risk life and limb in pursuit of tornadoes – the real stars in the movie ‘Twister.’ Quite the overstatement, but why not? NSSL’s research project called VORTEX is mentioned, as well as the University of Oklahoma.” - John Krause, research scientist, CIWRO, with his wife Jane Hornbrook (Krause)
“A particular moment in ‘Twister’ stuck into my little-kid brain. They discuss mammatus as a precursor for things to come, which are horrible, terrible and catastrophic. I spent many many hours of my childhood with my face plastered to the back car window searching for any suggestion of mammatus in the sky so I could be ready for the certain doom of a multi-day EF5 tornado outbreak in central West Virginia. I don't know why of all things the mammatus stuck with me, but it did.
As a relatively young woman in severe weather field research, it was not rare for someone to make a usually well-intentioned comparison between me and Jo [the heroine from the ‘Twister’ movie in 1996]. In the instances we wanted to get specialized cross-section scans (RHIs) of incoming outflows or other interesting features, I often needed to climb up to the lidar — which is using a laser to measure the wind in the near vicinity of storms that might be producing a tornado — to check out the angle of the scanner and do some quick trigonometry to figure out how to get it to the point where we wanted to scan. So there were a lot of times where I was up in the bed of a pickup in the wind and rain working on my instrument — which is using a laser to measure the wind in the near vicinity of storms that might be producing a tornado. I get the comparison.
When I was still in grad school and shortly after I finished, these used to bother me a bit. It felt reductive at best to be viewed as the one example of a woman represented in pop-culture in our field, plus her plot line was based mostly around pining for romance. I didn't hear male colleagues being ribbed as Bill. But as I got a little older, or probably as I felt a little bit safer in my role, I was able to see it a little bit differently. Jo was novel ... and unfortunately it is still a bit novel to see women climbing instruments in the beds of trucks. BUT I am grateful I saw Jo in that role in 1996. Even with the romance plot, it was still her instrument and her data. I am grateful for the women that came before ‘Twister’ and that were out here in the years in between. Now it's 2024, I am at NSSL -- no romance plot required! -- climbing trucks, deploying instruments, and always looking to make room for more Jos.” - Dr. Elizabeth Smith, research meteorologist, NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory
Media contact
Alison Gillespie, 202-713-6644, alison.gillespie@noaa.gov
