Breaking Down the Meteorology in Twister

The script originally had a tornado lasting for an entire day. The meteorological consultants said that would be impossible, but a tornado outbreak with multiple damaging tornadoes would be.

In short, the outbreak scenario Twister presents is surprisingly plausible, even if the tornadoes themselves behave in Hollywood fashion. Definitely a fun little video, though, and definitely helps to explain the basics of how synoptic patterns work to the less educated.

One thing that I noticed as a pretty big mistake in the movie was that the F5 tornado was being predicted during the middle of the night when the team was assessing the damage in Wakita. Then when the team gets to the F5 it is the middle of the afternoon which means that the tornado must’ve been on the ground for over 7-8 hours which is unheard of. Also the convective evolution likely would’ve become less favorable for tornadoes as the night progressed, along with the thermodynamic and kinematic environment.

In my headcanon, the first tornado they encounter is a landspout that quickly formed under a new developing updraft (uniform round flat cloud base, no RFD cut yet), intensifying as the storm developed a more robust meso, not too dissimilar to the 1997 Jarrell F5 or the 2007 Elie Manitoba F5. The film version appeared more like the latter, including the fact that it developed in a more traditional supercell environment, had a more "loopy" rope-out like appearance before strengthening into a violent drillbit, even so far as shredding a barn and lofting vehicles! The film one might have formed along an outflow boundary of some of the previous storms seen early on in the film when Jo and Bill first meet, which I think may be plausible with the strong low level instability you mentioned in the vid. Anyways, this was a really interesting & well made video, I've always wondered about the setup in this movie, it was great to see an in depth analysis of it! Also, I know its not in the USA, but have you thought of doing an analysis video for the 2007 Elie F5? It was such a bizzare tornado and I think it would enjoy taking a deeper dive into it!

I looking forward to see such a video with Twisters. A new Twisters is awesome in my opinion.

This one deserves a lot of recognition. No one is doing it like you Trey! The editing on this as you move through the film is really well done

Well DAMN THAT WAS GOOD! I didn’t expect you to dive that deep into! Awesome job, hell yeah!

This is an excellent idea! You should definitely look into more topics that help bridge the gap between us hardcore weather enthusiasts and the general public with content both groups can enjoy.

Just watched Twister for the first time yesterday (late to the game, I know -) and can’t believe my fav weather channel is now breaking it down today. Hell yeah, thank you!

I think I enjoyed the last 10 or so minutes as much as anything I can remember watching lately. Awesome video.

I've always laughed at the waterspout scene with the high pitched sound and then the weird blubbery fish noise. Extremely odd sound design choice but I think it was to make the tornadoes out to kind of be "characters" in their own right. Just got out of Twisters. It's overall a very good movie that also does a good job at trying to be scientifically accurate, but did also provide me with some eye-rolls with the way they used some of the terminology. I can't wait to see you break it down and see what your thoughts are.

Always a fun deep dive into this movie. I remember growing up and even in college and high school pointing out all the flaws of the movie but as you said, they did at least try to incorporate some meteorology. I think the most clever idea they did in the movie was actually showing what true tornado damage in the Wakita tornado did. Like that's kind of what it is like to run across tornado damage at night. I never seen that myself as I don't chase at night when it comes to tornadoes.....well....we never get those in the Northeast at night so yeah......anyway it was a good perspective of that for Hollywood and the film producers to show the reality of true tornado damage. The mesonet quote that Joe makes is so good....like they really did their research too in that scene too. Still even with all the flaws of the movie this has, this is basically our meteorology movie and what many of us 80s/90s kids that got us into meteorology and no shit it's quotable as hell cause why not. :P

This is just.... awesome. If they make a third movie, they should hire you as a consultant!!

Excellent work. As a huge fan of Twister, and as a stormchaser, this was fascinating on several different levels. Thank you!

Wheyy trey uploaded! Thanks trey :)

Excellent video. This remains my all time favorite movie

That tornado around Dallas like a decade ago flung multiple tractor trailers hundreds, if not thousands of feet. That footage got massive airplay nationwide and I don't think that was even an "historically significant" tornado. Gotta be careful about what you say a twister can and can't do because there's always exceptions - and most of them happen to be that Elie, Manitoba twister from 07 for whatever reason. That one also flung a tractor trailer, AND a brick house. Freak of nature, that one.

Great analysis as usual, cool to see that there's some meteorological accuracy. I definitely need to see this movie now

Huge W

The sounding part was really cool. I can imagine the wave of discrete cells that I fired. Despite the Hollywood moments in the movie, I appreciate that they actually added a synoptic setup to the movie. The moisture was particularly juicy, and also the precipitation venting was a cool feature. Always loved that beastly wedge at the end, it reminds me a heck lot of Keota on March 31 last year. I also feel like the addition of the wedge being a bit higher up made it look more tempting, intimidating in some sort of way but maybe that's just me. This was a brilliant video to watch, I'd honestly suggest it to even non weather fanatics for the watch! Always the number 1 tornado film