Tornado Chasers

Lesson Plan - Get It!

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The most famous movie about storm chasing is Twister, released in 1996. Many storm chasers credit the movie with inspiring them to get into storm chasing.

See how excited the storm chasers are to set off in search of a tornado in the movie scene below.

What do tornado chasers do other than chase tornadoes?

Tornado chasers can have several different goals. Some do it for the adrenaline rush, while others aim to catch a tornado on film.

The rest are professional scientists chasing tornadoes to study and learn how they form and behave. These are the tornado chasers featured in the film Twister.

In the movie, you can see how scientists use tools to study tornadoes. Twister has been praised for its scientific accuracy and for including real scientific tools, including the satellite featured in the movie.p

What instruments are used by tornado chasers?

Tornado chasers use many instruments, and several are shown in the movie. Below are a few of the instruments featured in Twister.

(For more science weather instruments, take a look at the Additional Resources found in the right-hand sidebar.)

GOES-8 Satellite

The official name of the GOES-8 is the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. You can probably see why they shortened the name.

Here is an artist's depiction of GOES-8.

Like other satellites, the GOES-8 was launched into the earth's atmosphere (not outer space). It weighed 4,641 pounds and was roughly 36,000 km from the earth's surface.

It was used to monitor weather conditions from high above the earth's surface until it was retired in 2003 and replaced with the GOES-12.

This is the first image ever returned by GOES-8 on May 9, 1994.

Doppler Radar

Doppler radar, or simply Doppler, is a method of observing the weather in our atmosphere. You can see the current National Weather Service Radar map for the continental United States.

Doppler radar is named after the Doppler effect, which describes how things look and sound differently based on their moving.

Basically, a radio wave is sent out. It bounces back when it hits something like storms or rain clouds. Scientists can tell how the storm moves based on how the radar is received when it returns.

Watch the following video to see how it works.

Dorothy

Dorothy is the name of the pod-like structure used throughout the Twister film. See it explained in this clip.

Although Dorothy never actually existed, it was modeled after a real project called TOTO, or the TOtable TOrnado Observatory, that ran from 1981-1984.

TOTO was essentially the same as Dorothy — a large barrel filled with weather tools to record data inside the tornado. Unlike Dorothy, these tools were not meant to fly into the sky but to stay in the barrel.

Several groups attempted to place TOTO in the line of a tornado, switch on the scientific instruments, and quickly leave. Unfortunately, the plan never worked. The closest it got was in 1984 when TOTO was sideswiped by a tornado and knocked to the ground. It was retired shortly after.

Move on to the Got It? section to play some tornado-related games. Don't worry; it's not Twister!