Twister Almost Ruined Storm Chasing Back in the 1990s. The Sequel Has Hobbyists Battening Down the Hatches.
In all the interviews that director Lee Isaac Chung and the team behind Twisters have done ahead of the film’s premiere, no one has asked the question I most want answered: Have the characters in Twisters seen Twister?
Maybe it’s an unnecessarily mind-bending question for a straightforward disaster flick. But it’s difficult to imagine the world Twisters portrays—especially Glen Powell’s character, the social media celebrity storm chaser Tyler Owens—existing at all without the 1996 blockbuster. That movie created a media storm around a niche hobby that left some significant wreckage in its wake.
Although the original film’s debut introduced many theatergoers to storm chasing, weather researchers and enthusiasts had already been pursuing storms for more than two decades. Official storm-chasing programs began in the 1970s as a way to research severe storms, although a few hardy atmospheric devotees had been tracking down storms since the late 1950s. In 1972 the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, teamed up with University of Notre Dame engineering professor Bruce Morgan to trial a program dubbed the Tornado Intercept Project. Despite skepticism, they thought it was worth seeing whether they could get close enough to a tornado to learn something useful.
The program proved that researchers could approach a tornado by car, photograph it, and collect meaningful ground-level observations that enhanced their understanding of what they saw on radar screens. For the researchers—a group already attracted to the awe-inspiring atmosphere of the Plains—it was also addictive. Storm chasing became a regular part of severe-storm research. The chasers, especially the students at the University of Oklahoma who volunteered for the program, were hooked. They introduced storm chasing to colleagues and friends. A community formed as chasers shared experiences, safety tips, and photographs via letters, in-person gatherings, and even a newsletter called Storm Track, launched in 1977 by amateur chaser David Hoadley.
A group of obsessive enthusiasts driving across the Plains, chasing storms that most sensible people would run from? Storm chasing was catnip to reporters, who frequently asked to tag along throughout the 1980s. The small chase community was profiled in newspapers, magazines, and television programs. PBS’s NOVA series released a widely seen tornado episode in 1985, and the Atlantic published a gripping account. Journalists covered the scientific research too, including OU professor Howie Bluestein’s data-collection device, dubbed TOTO (for TOtable Tornado Observatory), which inspired Twister’s DOROTHY. Technology also evolved, from improved radar networks to inexpensive camcorders, making it easier for chasers to capture compelling footage. Some chasers even began carrying laptops and cellphones to download weather data on the go.
By the time storm chasers heard that a movie studio was producing a film about storm chasing, the community had steadily grown, and tensions abounded. Longtime chasers grumbled about newer participants who did not share their approach to chasing. Debates erupted over etiquette in National Weather Service offices and on the road. Other disagreements revolved around motivations. As television programs—including the Weather Channel, which launched in 1982 and hosted a storm-chasing conference in 1995—hungered for storm footage, some chasers sought to offset the costs of their hobby by selling their tornado videos. Others condemned the practice, asserting that competition for the best videos led to reckless behavior that gave chasers a bad name. Meteorologist Chuck Doswell, who had started chasing with the Tornado Intercept Project in the 1970s, dubbed those who were interested solely in thrill-seeking and financial gain “yahoos.” The name stuck and peppered storm-chaser arguments in newsletters and on internet bulletin boards and email listservs.
The association between different types of chasers and their accompanying behavior was not always cut-and-dried. Some who scoffed at entrepreneurial chasers occasionally sold their own storm images. Others pointed out that research scientists were periodically the ones driving recklessly in pursuit of storms. Newer participants argued that they had as much right to learn—and make mistakes—as veteran chasers had. What no one could deny was that there were far more storm chasers on the road. The term chaser convergence came to describe the increasingly common phenomenon of storm chasers, which now included not only hobbyists and scientists but also television weather crews, parked along a crowded highway shoulder, waiting for the same storm. By the early 1990s, chasers worried what this might mean for storm chasing’s future.
Twister seemed likely to be one more potential fissure in a community already struggling with its identity. But even chasers anxious about its impact could not have anticipated how much the film would change storm chasing.
Some were optimistic that, after the initial frenzy of the movie’s premiere, the attention would fade. In the January 1996 Storm Track newsletter, editor Tim Marshall wrote, “I expect an outbreak of enthusiasts will descend upon the plains, but anticipate that the tornado chase craze ropes out before the 1997 chase season.” After wannabes, high on images of flying cows and Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton holding on for dear life, got a taste of actual storm chasing—with its hours of endless driving, the frustrations of forecasts that didn’t pan out, and the misery of gas station food and cheap motels—they would surely abandon their interest.
This time was different, though. Because it was a fictional account, Twister dramatized storm chasing in a way news media had never been able to, and special effects added to the on-screen adrenaline. Twister was a hit, making almost $500 million at the box office. Other media outlets saw storm chasing not only as a quirky, one-off story but as a subject with a potentially massive audience. Entrepreneurial storm chasers had a larger market for their offerings than ever before.
Before the film, a handful of chasers had tentatively launched tour companies, offering weeklong vacations that, for a couple thousand dollars, would let guests ride along with experienced chasers, although they couldn’t guarantee a tornado. After Twister, the number of these companies grew to meet the ballooning demand from tourists across the country—and the world—who had disposable income and wanted a straight line to the excitement. Entertainment Weekly publicized the tours, as did Maxim, saying, “The message of Twister is that only pros with expensive equipment should mess with the deadly business of chasing tornadoes. Screw that!”
Chasers who sold their footage profited too. Marshall claimed to have made almost $20,000 for his videos and photographs in 1996 and more than $40,000 in 1997 thanks to “tornado fever.” Hundreds of people wrote to him and others, asking how they could become storm chasers. Storm Track’s print subscriptions, which had slumped to about 600 in 1995, hit nearly 1,000 about two years after the film’s debut. Online forums were deluged by newcomers. The Daily Oklahoman reported that “pleas from chaser ‘newbies’ across the country wanting to glom onto experts pock a Web site like hail dents on a chase car.”
The post-Twister tornado craze continued for years. In 1998 Universal Studios opened an attraction called Twister … Ride It Out. Television and documentary film specials proliferated. In 1999, when two undergraduate storm chasers at the University of Oklahoma filmed particularly gripping storm footage, they were invited to make television appearances everywhere from Letterman to Maury.
Some chasers became celebrities. While many sought to downplay the thrill of their hobby to reporters, others were only too happy to provide a brash sound bite and present themselves as “extreme” chasers on camera. In 2007 the Discovery Channel jumped on the reality television bandwagon with Storm Chasers, a series that followed several chase teams for five seasons. Although some of the teams pursued research goals, the show amped up the drama and adrenaline, made more compelling because it featured “real” storm chasers, not fictional characters.
The effects of Twister were felt not only in popular media but also in meteorology programs. Enrollment in meteorology courses soared in the decades following the film, a phenomenon one professor referred to as the “Twister effect.” Helen Hunt’s portrayal of an atmospheric research scientist was particularly powerful in drawing young women to a field that had traditionally been overwhelmingly male-dominated.
Despite some positive effects, many chasers have bemoaned the changes to storm chasing. Commentators worry about collisions from chasers who flock to forecast storms. After the high-profile death of experienced chaser Tim Samaras in 2013, Eric Holthaus wrote in Slate that storm chasing for profit was no longer justifiable. Some chasers say they have given up the pastime altogether, scornful of the proliferation of chasers posting increasingly breathless videos on social media, each hoping to become a star—much like Twisters’ Tyler Owens.
It’s hard to know how storm chasing might have evolved had Twister never been made. It’s equally hard to know what impact Twisters might have. For some longtime chasers, the new film seems to represent less a potential threat and more a reflection of how the chasing world has evolved. The world they once hoped to shield from too much attention is already long gone. Twisters, and its characters, mirrors the world that Twister helped make, whether or not Tyler Owens has seen the original movie.
