Word: twister
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...scientific consultants on the film). They speculate, though, that most of the flying transmitters would be blown away from the vortex or destroyed by debris. Over the years, researchers have proposed all sorts of zany schemes for getting instruments into a tornado's heart, including blasting at the twister with instrumented rockets and probing it with pilotless planes. One day, no doubt, someone will try building a Dorothy-like instrument--and may even manage to make it work...
...nationwide. Already NEXRAD has helped extend the lead time for tornado warnings from three to eight minutes, on average. Sometimes the warning comes even earlier. Last month weather forecasters in Little Rock, Arkansas, called a tornado warning for communities in the Ozark Mountains a full 35 minutes before the twister showed up, giving people who lived in trailer homes time to scurry to friends' basements for safety...
Scientists love to swap these stories almost as much as they enjoy debunking oft-repeated twister myths (like the one about tornadoes driving bits of straw through fence posts--what may actually happen, scientists suggest, is that a sudden drop in air pressure forces the wood to expand, allowing the straw to lodge in newly opened cracks). But even with all they've learned about the physical forces that power the creation of twisters, meteorologists still cannot say beforehand what path a particular tornado is likely to take or how much damage it is likely to do. That's what...
...know a movie is in trouble when a cow provides its only moment of authentic human interest. In Twister, as a team of meteorologists races toward a tornado, a terrified Holstein, mooing madly, blows by their windshield, then blows back again...
...special-effects watching. These are, to be sure, excellent, a seamless blend of digital wizardry and mechanical stunts supervised by the masterful John Frazier. Excellent too is Jack N. Green's cinematography, stubbornly trying to supply the moods and textures missing from the script. In the end, though, Twister proves what everyone already knows--that great visual effects alone cannot carry a picture to anything but insane profitability. And that Michael Crichton has never met man, woman or scientific phenomenon that he cannot convert to dehumanized cliche...