68 things wrong with the film Twister

[Mike Peregrine]

As for the dirt smelling issue ... lol ...

Actually - if you ever come back to the plains, you'll notice a completely different 'aroma' than you have on the east coast. I used to describe it to people as an "earthy smell" ... I may be out of my gourd (no doubt), but I used to step off the plane and notice it immediately. It's sort of a fresh smell - the smell of growing things and rich soil (keep in mind that this is not within a five mile radius of any stockyards facility) ...

Anyway, just before a good rain, you can smell it here ... almost everyone always makes the remark that they can smell the rain coming at one point or another. My thinking is that it is probably due to several things ... including convective activity that stirs up ozone upstairs ... ozone in small quantities has a refreshing scent (what you smell during and after rainfall) ... probably this combined with the reaction of plants and soil to increased humidity, etc ... I'm thinking that it probably helps these things start releasing more aroma. Another thing you notice just before storms is that the leaves on many trees will turn to face upward (making them look white), and flowers will close up in response to what's coming ... they're all good signs that rain is on the way!

Here's another idea of why it smells so good:

http://yak.net/fqa/288.html


Don't know if that's what they had in mind for the movie or not, but just what came to my mind anyway ...

 

[Justin McCauliffe]

This isn't about Twister the movie, but about a made for TV movie like it. I can't remember what it was called, but I think it beats Twister's 68 errors with it's 1. I'm pretty sure it was trying to capitalize off Twister's sucess. Anyways, the part I remember from it is when a tornado is about to hit this house and the people are trying to get to a shelter in the backyard. It was like a real tornado...except for one big thing, they portrayed the inside of a tornado exactly like the eye of a hurricane. Very little wind and clear skies. Anyone remember/viewed this movie?

 

[Thomas Loades]

Yeah, this was Tornado, which is (or was), apparently, one of Fox's highest-rating programs ever. But yes, it was made to cash in on Twister, and this thing's storyline pretty much follows the movie's, right down to the instrument probe that has to be put into the tornado to reveal some manner of secret to get warnings out faster. I know this because I have a copy. The special effects really suck, too.

 

[Sam Hunter]

So storm chasers aren't out there smelling dirt, though, right? That's good to know. Didn't know about the FOX movie.

There's something about twisters, isn't there, that seems to haunt the imagination, perhaps even more than other types of severe weather, that attracts people to watch. Strangely, having lived here in CNY my entire life, I have dreamt of them often, though I've never seen one, and here I am driven to write about them (and the people who study them). Hurricanes, earthquakes, etc just don't have the same allure. All the way back to the Wizard of Oz, tornadoes seem to be fictional stars.

Volcanic eruptions might provide a close second, now that I think about it.

Anyway, I have been reading up on the Super Outbreak in April 1974, to see what a "super outbreak" was -- I was 11 years old then and don't remember anything, but was anyone else around for that? Was that jet stream peculiarity similar to what happened in 1993?

Sam