Word: twister
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...dust and debris was following a bit too closely behind. Just as wild animals sometimes turn and track their hunters, Davies-Jones realized with growing alarm, the tornado he had started out chasing was chasing him. No, this is not one of those scary scenes from the movie Twister, which opened in theaters across the country last week (see review). Rather, it is a slice of the real-life science that inspired Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg, creators of the dinosaur blockbuster Jurassic Park, to make the movie in the first place. For Davies-Jones is not some casual thrill...
...acquired a deeper understanding of the spectacular springtime storms that produce the most violent tornadoes. They have played a crucial role in developing a new type of radar that can peer through the darkest clouds and detect areas of rapid rotation as much as half an hour before a twister touches down. And now--thanks to an unprecedented data-gathering effort known as VORTEX (short for Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment)--these daredevils of meteorology are beginning to provide fresh insight into the long-standing mystery of what it is, exactly, that creates a tornado...
...course the researchers who chase intense storms never want to get that close to a tornado either, and they also try to avoid getting hit by lightning or losing control when driving too fast over slippery roads. And while they are certainly curious about the movie Twister and are well aware of the growing market for tornado videos (see box), scientists like Davies-Jones are worried that the attention their arcane line of work is attracting may inspire people to take unwise risks. They are aware that the romance of tornado chasing has attracted a dangerous number of amateurs. Sometimes...
...more punishment than they do. During last year's VORTEX run, for example, Davies-Jones and his partners were charged with the task of placing Turtles--canisters weighted with lead and packed with temperature and pressure gauges--in the path of an oncoming tornado. As it turned out, the twister swerved and missed the Turtles. But the softball-size hailstones that followed found their mark--smashing a windshield and a rear window. Another time, Davies-Jones' partner, concentrating on a tornado that had just been sighted, slammed into a drainage ditch at 30 m.p.h...
Storm-chasing scientists do have a genius for coming up with some pretty wild ideas, however. The University of Oklahoma's Howard Bluestein really did develop an instrument akin to the device called Dorothy in Twister. Bluestein, who was one of the models for meteorologist Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) in the movie, named his device the Totable Tornado Observatory, TOTO for short, and tried to intercept an oncoming funnel. TOTO was a bit unwieldy (it tipped the scales at 400 lbs.), so researchers switched to the more sprightly Turtles, which are cheaper to build and more easily deployed...