Is Twisters Scientifically Accurate?

Is "Twisters" scientifically accurate? The answer is not, as a cynical reader might assume, an instant no. Jan De Bont's original "Twister" in 1996 has a lot to answer for, but its 2024 follow-up has a little bit more on its mind; its creatives were more careful.

There is some nuance to real-life storm science that "Twisters" directly taps into. "Twisters," for those who missed Lee Isaac Chung's 2024 blockbuster, centers on Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a former storm-chaser. In the film's prologue, Kate loses several of her closest peers to a tornado while doing some dangerous research, hoping to use specialized chemicals to cause the storm to instantly dissipate. (The experiment is not successful.) Years after the tragedy, Kate has settled into a world of safe, indoor meteorology. She now works for the NOAA, but is afraid to venture outdoors underneath stormy skies.

Kate is then pulled back into storm-chasing by Javi (Anthony Ramos), an old colleague who has a wealthy benefactor and better equipment than Kate had in the past. She's thusly lured out to storm country, hoping to use this new equipment to better map out and predict tornadoes. While working, she meets Tyler (Glen Powell), a dazzling, rock-n-roll storm-chasing YouTuber who encourages her to pick up her research again, as he believes in helping storm victims. Kate had previously tried to make tornadoes dissipate by seeding them with sodium polyacrylate, but over the course of the film, she learns that she should have tried silver iodide instead.

This idea of using chemicals to "melt" a tornado is, according to several scientists, complete hokum. The film's actual depiction of weather patterns and the behavior of tornadoes, however, is apparently largely accurate.

When Time Magazine interviewed Michael Seger, the chief meteorologist for 2News Oklahoma KJRH, he pointed out that it's pretty much impossible to force a storm to dissipate. Beyond that, though, he said a lot of the weather science in "Twisters" is sound. 

To summarize, Seger noted that storms usually suck up a lot of air in their updrafts and then precipitate hail back downward in their downdrafts. Weaker storms also swirl around upright, allowing them to absorb their own downdrafts and pretty much devour themselves. Stronger storms, in contrast, have angled updrafts and their downdrafts fall out to the side. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but Seger was essentially stating that feeding polymers into a tornado — as Kate was planning to do during the prologue to "Twisters" — wouldn't do much more than throw some polymers haphazardly into the air (especially if it was only one pickup truck's worth of polymers).

Seger also pointed out that Tyler's tornado-proof truck isn't a great idea (even if it looks cool on screen). Tyler's truck is equipped with massive drills that essentially stake his truck into the round to prevent it from being blown away during a storm. This sort of equipment has, in fact, been used in real life, specifically for the 2011 IMAX documentary "Tornado Alley." Seger, however, was quick to point out that such drills are effective, but one needs to attach them to a heavy-duty armored vehicle if one wants to be protected. "If you were just out there in a normal vehicle, it would be battered," he explained. "Stuff would be flying through the windows. So the screwing might help to keep the vehicle on the ground, but the debris is the most damaging part. It would probably be destroyed."

More than anything, though, Seger loved the VFX in the movie. Chung and his production team clearly worked with actual meteorologists to accurate depict what tornadoes look like on the big screen. As Kate eventually learns by the end of "Twisters," if you see it, chase it.

As Wired reported in 2024, several real-life storm-chasing terms were involved with the making of "Twisters." Seger noted that there actually is a storm-chasing community out there, and one will frequently seem its members huddled around gas stations during storm season, just like in the movie. Both meteorologists and amateur storm-chasers have their own jargon as well, and it seems that "Twisters" screenwriter Mark L. Smith used it correctly. 

For instance, the term "death ridge," as Wired pointed out, refers to a high-pressure area that is more conducive to hot and dry conditions; hence, storms don't form on them. The film's characters also use the term "the Fujiwara effect," which is the real-life phenomenon of what happens two tornadoes approach each other. They begin to swirl in circles around each other — almost "dancing." The Fujiwara effect is usually used to describe hurricanes, but it can be applied to twisters as well. Indeed, such a thing happened in 1965 in Indiana.

Wired also called attention to an exciting scene in "Twisters" wherein a storm blasts its way into an industrial refinery, causing it to explode. The storm then sucks up all the fire and looks, for a few moments, like a vignette in "Heavy Metal." (Only "Heavy Metal" would have included something that gruesome.) In real life, a storm would suck up all the air required to keep a fire burning, although Wired observed there's also the phenomenon known as cumulonimbus flammagenitus, which is when a wildfire or nuclear explosion becomes so large that it creates its own miniature storm system. Within such a system, a badass fire tornado is indeed possible. It's not just something one might expect to regularly see out in the field.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2024, Chung observed that the original "Twister" was not at all accurate. Fans of the 1996 film will recall that its protagonists wanted to "map" a tornado by releasing hundreds of computer-equipped sensor balls up into a storm. This, Chung knew, was bunk. "The idea of putting these Dorothy sensor balls into a tornado is completely science fiction," he explained, "but it inspired a generation of people to want to do scientific research on storms." Chung knew he was making a summer blockbuster, and that long stretches of scientific exposition would be anathema to thrills, so he admitted that the chemical destruction of a tornado was entirely made up.

At the same time, Chung wanted to at least "pay homage" to actual scientific principals. He credited Kevin Kelleher, the scientific advisor on the original "Twister," for anything accurate that turned up in his movie, explaining:

"Kevin worked with [screenwriter] Mark [L. Smith] and me on the subsequent drafts of the script, and he was in the room for VFX meetings and for all these discussions on, theoretically, how would we collapse a tornado? All of that is based on real science. And then the trick, once we had the science in place, was how do we communicate that to viewers?"

Chung was rightly more thoughtful about storytelling than science. Clarity is more important than accuracy in filmmaking. (For more on that, check out Chung's exclusive interview with /Film.)

"Twisters" is currently available to stream on Peacock.