When it comes to influential films in the world of climate research and weather reporting, few (if any) can hold a candle to “Twister, Jan de Bont’s epic action movie that has spawned a sequel blowing through theaters this weekend.
When the film came out in 1996, Dr. Elizabeth Smith, then not quite 6 years old, went to the theater to see it with her parents “and I apparently lost my mind about it and became obsessed, she told CNN in an email interview.
When it came out on VHS, she remembers “watching it over-and-over-and-over the way some kids watched things like ‘The Little Mermaid.’
Smith, who keeps an enamel pin of the “Twister VHS on the lanyard she wears at work, is now a research meteorologist at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory – an organization that even gets a mention in the de Bont film.
“I also remember certain concepts really imprinting on me, she told CNN of “Twister’s impact. “Specifically in the early chase scenes, Jo and Bill (Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton) are in the truck, and they recognize mammatus clouds in the sky overhead. They indicate that this is an omen for bad things to come. I have very clear memories of plastering my face to the backseat window watching, just in case the mammatus appeared so I would be READY
Many took their interest in the subject one step further, with enrollment in undergraduate weather research and meteorology programs seeing a notable bump. Academic research articles on these trends sometimes refer to this as the “Twister Effect
“A few years after ‘Twister,’ enrollment numbers at (the University of Oklahoma’s) School of Meteorology – applications doubled, Dr. Harold E. Brooks, an affiliate professor at the university and senior research scientist at NSSL, said.
Brooks – who served as a technical advisor on “Twister – also pointed to the film’s impact felt outside of the US, in places like Finland that didn’t have research and data collection for extreme storms like tornadoes until the release of that movie.
CNN weather reporter Brandon Miller is also among those who got sucked into the meteorology field by “Twister He remembers seeing the movie as a child with his father, who was a weather-enthusiast.
“He loved the weather and he and I would always go outside and watch big storms together when I was a kid, Miller said. “I was obsessed with weather and tornadoes were my favorite type of weather, and back then there wasn’t much of an opportunity to consume that type of content – so I just remember being in awe of the entire thing
For Smith, the legacy of the original “Twister is a complicated one. Her line of work closely mirrors that of Hunt’s character Jo Harding in the first film and she will often find herself hauling scientific instruments in the bed of a pickup or a tow-behind trailer.
Noting that she is unfortunately, one of very few women doing this professionally, Smith described how it is not uncommon for people, both colleagues and strangers at a truck stop, to jokingly call me ‘Jo’ while I’m working that way
That brings up some complicated stuff, she said. Was it impressive that films like ‘Twister’ and ‘Jurassic Park’ (featuring Laura Dern as a paleobotanist) were showcasing women scientists almost 30 years ago? Yes! But in reality Jo’s storyline is still reduced to a he-gets-the-girl in the end plot – wet tank tops and all
Expectations are running high for “Twisters, the Lee Isaac Chung-directed new installment which is coming out this week and stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell. To the generation of storm chasers who largely dedicated their lives to the science of weather because of the 1996 movie, the hope is that the new entry will get more than a few things right.
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