You may have noticed a new title in theatres recently. Twisters begins with Kate Carter and her storm chasing friends who are hoping to release samples of sodium polyacrylate beads (a super absorbing chemical) into a tornado in hopes of reducing its intensity which could further tornado research. Everything is lined up finally until the tornado is nearly on top of them when it rapidly intensifies into an EF5 which kills three of the five people chasing it.
After this disaster the two who survived ended up quitting storm chasing and five years later Kate works at a NOAA office. While Kate is in New York City, Javi works for a mobile storm chasing radar. Javi offers Kate a one week trial position with his team to test a new radar system. Kate understandably declines at first but changes her mind when Javi shows her a news report of a tornado destroying a town without warning. Kate and Javi join together to further their research in Oklahoma. This is where a new character is introduced. This new character is Tyler Owen’s who is a fictional popular YouTuber looking to make money on tornadoes. They get in range to intercept a weak tornado and Kate’s team sets up 2 of three mobile radar scanners. Kate then suffers a panic attack which causes her to drive away and they were not able to set up the final radar scanner.
The team tracks another storm that has a tornado and a secondary tornado called a satellite. The Youtube storm chaser follows the better looking tornado while Kate’s team follows the satellite. The satellite intensifys while the main tornado weakens. The tornado takes out a mobile radar scanner they set up and they go to a nearby tornado destroyed town to help with recovery efforts. Kate learns at the town that the youtuber (Tyler Owens) actually supports the tornado victims by selling merchandise.
The problem is that this movie will arise many new storm chasers that gain interest from this movie. These new storm chasers may be inexperienced and cause traffic on potential escape routes. The Moore Oklahoma tornado in the movie is based on a real tornado the destroyed the town of Moore and killed a storm chaser after it trapped his escape route and turned violently.
The storm chaser who was killed was Tim Samaras. Tim Samaras was an American Engineer and storm chaser known for his research on tornadoes and tv shows including tornadoes. This movie highlights how dangerous tornadoes are and may also contribute to the problem of chaser convergence. Which is a problem that storm chasers all end up on the same route which creates traffic in potential escape zones.
