What ‘Twisters’ got right according to Alberta storm chasers

‘Twisters’ has been taking the summer box office by storm but according to a pair of Alberta storm chasers, the fictitious disaster movie got some things right and some things wrong when it comes to their craft.

‘Twisters,’ which follows storm chasers in Oklahoma who end up in a fight for their lives, has raked in more than US$220 million at the world-wide box office since its July 19 release.

CTV News spoke with two storm chasers who discussed the movie and broke down what actually happens out on the hunt for storms and what was built for the box office.

Chris Ratzlaff, a storm chaser in Alberta, said for weather enthusiasts, weather-themed movies are fun to see.

“There is a criticism but also a fun in the criticism,” said Ratzlaff. “Seeing some of the things that it gets right and some of the things that it gets wrong.”

Beth Allan has been chasing storms since 2007 – in Alberta for 15 years. She has seen ‘Twisters’ twice already and says she was certainly entertained by the film.

“It was sort of everything you hope for in a disaster movie,” Allan said.

The community

Both chasers said that, overall, the movie represented their community well.

“How the (storm-chasing) community works together, how it focuses on helping people, but also how it has grown a lot in the last couple of years and has become a bit of a YouTube sensation,” Ratzlaff said.

“I think in terms of accuracy, the depiction of people storm-chasing for different reasons. There are people doing it for science, there are people doing it for YouTube,” Allan added.

A central character in the film is Tyler Owens, played by Glen Powell, who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures online.

“The main character, I would say that is an accurate reflection of some of the personalities within storm-chasing,” Ratzlaff said.

“Definitely a lot of people who use it for YouTube clicks and YouTube fame.”

Another aspect of storm-chasing the film got right was the depictions of storm chasers’ experiences driving through wild weather, according to Ratzlaff.

“Not only a lot of driving but, some of the dangers of driving … when you are storm-chasing, there are a lot of cars on the road sometimes and they are not always paying very close attention to the rules of the road,” he said.

“I think the other accurate representation in the movie was at the very beginning not going under underpasses because they are very dangerous … the characters actually end up going into the underpass, and the danger of the underpass gets kind of highlighted.”

Allan has spent years storm-chasing in the United States and is familiar with the storm-chasing scene in Oklahoma.

“Seeing people make terrible decisions on the road in terms of cutting each other off and not checking where they’re driving and blowing stop signs and stuff. That’s something that I have seen.”

The science

Some of the science in ‘Twisters,’ however, was harder for Ratzlaff and Allan to wrap their heads around.

“A lot of the science was definitely a little bit tricky to accept. Some of the science was definitely quite far off,” said Ratzlaff.

“Some representation of forecasting, of how they were able to defeat the storm in the end. Those were a little bit of a stretch.”

Allan agreed that some of the science was “a bit sketchy.”

“People don’t normally drive into tornadoes … and there was a lot of driving into tornadoes in the movie,” Allan said.

“Injecting a bunch of stuff into a cloud to make a tornado disappear and things like that. It would be great if we had a way to control the weather but it just doesn’t happen.”

She did point out Calgarians might be familiar with cloud seeding, which was tied into the film.

“That would be something Calgarians are very familiar with because we do seed our clouds. We don’t seed our clouds to stop tornadoes, we seed our clouds to slow down the hail.”