Speaker 1: This is the most traumatic podcast ever and iHeartRadio podcast.
Speaker 1: Chris Harrison comany from the home office in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: I would say geographically just outside of Tornado Alley, which
Speaker 1: is where I grew up, but growing up in Dallas
Speaker 1: then going to school in Oklahoma. The reason I mentioned
Speaker 1: that is our obsession with the movie Twisters, an absolute
Speaker 1: box office hit with Glenn Palell, and everybody's been talking
Speaker 1: about it. I shared a previous episode how during my
Speaker 1: days in Oklahoma City, when I was in local news,
Speaker 1: from time to time I would Stormchase and one of
Speaker 1: the biggest events was in late May of ninety nine,
Speaker 1: right before I left Oklahoma City. Actually I covered the
Speaker 1: biggest tornado outbreak at the time and one of the
Speaker 1: biggest tornadoes ever recorded. So the movie Twisters has kind
Speaker 1: of hit near and dear to my heart. And I
Speaker 1: found this guy, Sean Waugh, who actually worked on the
Speaker 1: movie Twisters. He was kind of the technical expert. They
Speaker 1: recruited him and his teammates from the National Severe Storm Laboratory,
Speaker 1: which is down there in Norman, Oklahoma, about thirty forty
Speaker 1: five minute drive just south of Oklahoma City. It's where
Speaker 1: the University of Oklahoma is but to ensure an accurate
Speaker 1: portrayal of the chasing lifestyle of the storms, of the
Speaker 1: phrases and terms that we're used. Sewn Wah, who actually
Speaker 1: works he's a meteorologist, works in weather all the time.
Speaker 1: They brought him in to work with the film crew,
Speaker 1: the actors and everything, and I just thought, what a
Speaker 1: great insight into one of our favorite films of the summer.
Speaker 1: So let's bring on our guest, Sean Waugh. Sean, good
Speaker 1: to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: It looks like you're in a tornado bunker. Are you
Speaker 1: Are you safe right now?
Speaker 3: Are you? I am safe right now. I'm actually in Norman,
Speaker 3: Oklahoma at the National Weather Center.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's right down there in Norman, Oklahoma, next to
Speaker 1: the campus of OU. I was in So I was
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma City for ten twelve twelve years, I guess
Speaker 1: because I went to Oklahoma City University but then worked
Speaker 1: at Channel nine. And I'm sure you are familiar with
Speaker 1: all the meteorologists and stuff up there and where weather
Speaker 1: is king as we are in tornado season and we're
Speaker 1: in the middle of tornado Alley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: Weather It's one of those things that everybody talked about
Speaker 3: here like anywhere else in the world or in the country,
Speaker 3: it's kind of like, oh, we're talking about the weather,
Speaker 3: and you know here everybody gets really.
Speaker 2: Excited about it.
Speaker 1: There's this right of passage at a certain age where
Speaker 1: you get you know, your the best weather app and
Speaker 1: it's like we're all we're all you know, want to
Speaker 1: be meteorologists. Now you know that. Before there's there's no
Speaker 1: way anybody else had access to Doppler radar. Now I
Speaker 1: have it in my own phone, and so have you
Speaker 1: seen that explosion? With smartphones and everything, In all seriousness,
Speaker 1: the amateur getting more and more involved in all of this,
Speaker 1: and I and probably a good way, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's some bad to it as well.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you go back and you ask people
Speaker 3: that have chased for you know, fifty sixty years, like, hey, like,
Speaker 3: how did you guys see things back in the day,
Speaker 3: The short answer is they really didn't most of the time.
Speaker 3: And technology has certainly made a lot of the aspects
Speaker 3: of what we do, you know, whether that be storm
Speaker 3: chasing or severe weather research, whatever it's it's really helped
Speaker 3: us like tune into things and do our job better.
Speaker 3: But it's also opened the door to just people that
Speaker 3: just want to come out and see what mother nature
Speaker 3: has to offer to kind of view things. And not
Speaker 3: that there's necessarily anything bad about that, but when it's
Speaker 3: so easy to just pull up a radar app on
Speaker 3: your phone, find the nearest tornado warning, and almost map
Speaker 3: yourself to it, it ends up creating like huge traffic
Speaker 3: problems on some of the events that I've seen, especially
Speaker 3: in central Oklahoma, on days that just get really hyped up,
Speaker 3: and I've actually had to abandon targets like pick a
Speaker 3: completely different storm just because I turned down a road
Speaker 3: and this road sees like ten cars a year, and
Speaker 3: now there's a thousand.
Speaker 2: People on it and annually it's total gridlock.
Speaker 3: I mean it looks like you're driving around in like
Speaker 3: downtown Manhattan, you know, like just traffic jam everywhere. Everybody's
Speaker 3: out on the road. You can't move. That's a huge
Speaker 3: safety hazard. So I've actually like started factoring that into
Speaker 3: my like work plan and stuff.
Speaker 1: That is bizarre. So yeah, So, I mean one of
Speaker 1: the things that's kind of manifested this conversation and everybody's
Speaker 1: excitement is obviously the movie Twisters came out and it
Speaker 1: has been a huge box office hit, as it was
Speaker 1: back by the way in the mid nineties. When the
Speaker 1: original came out in ninety six, I was very much
Speaker 1: in the world of Oklahoma weather at the time. I
Speaker 1: was working at KWATV Channel nine at the time for
Speaker 1: you know, the god of all meteorologists, Gary England, the
Speaker 1: legend and the man who I think had a hand
Speaker 1: in creating Doppeler radar, which is crazy. But back then,
Speaker 1: there was never any Lookie Lose, never just some Joe
Speaker 1: Schmoe with with any sort of even a CB radio
Speaker 1: to figure out where these storms were. That's something we
Speaker 1: never had to deal with. So you know that's scene
Speaker 1: from the movie Twisters where there's hundreds of people in
Speaker 1: a parking lot and they're all, you know, tourists. That's
Speaker 1: a real thing.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I actually joke. I mean at this point, I've
Speaker 3: seen the movie three times. It's tons of fun. You know,
Speaker 3: if you haven't seen it, definitely go watch it. Go
Speaker 3: watch it again.
Speaker 1: It's a great ride. It's I've seen it twice already.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. I've seen it twice.
Speaker 2: Perfect.
Speaker 3: The most unrealistic part of that movie when they're doing
Speaker 3: the different chase scenes and it's only like the storm
Speaker 3: par vehicles or Tyler's team on the road, Like that
Speaker 3: is never the case in the real world. There are
Speaker 3: so many people that are out on these storms, and
Speaker 3: with social media and YouTube and you know, all of
Speaker 3: these different streaming platforms like Twitch and things, everybody now
Speaker 3: has access to that high quality imagery. I used to
Speaker 3: go out with like a DSLR camera and now you
Speaker 3: just take my phone because it takes better photos than
Speaker 3: I could on a DSLR. Right, So it's really easy
Speaker 3: for people to go out and put themselves in those positions,
Speaker 3: but it can also be really like dangerous, right, because
Speaker 3: if you don't know what you're doing, it's really easy
Speaker 3: to get yourself into a position that you really shouldn't
Speaker 3: be in, and you're kind of like flirting with things
Speaker 3: that could like ultimately cause like a lot of harm.
Speaker 1: Or these things are very deadly. Yeah, like yeah, this
Speaker 1: kind of reminds me Sean of Mount Everest, which was
Speaker 1: this elusive mountain and very few people would climb it.
Speaker 1: And now you see these videos and it looks like
Speaker 1: a day at the mall. There are hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of people lined up with sherpas, et cetera, and it's
Speaker 1: it's almost lost some of the purity and the sanctity
Speaker 1: of it. And I feel like this is kind of
Speaker 1: the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I mean if you roll back ten fifteen
Speaker 3: ish years ago, that's when you first started really seeing
Speaker 3: a lot of these storm chasing groups that started popping
Speaker 3: up that offered tours.
Speaker 2: Right, So if you.
Speaker 3: Didn't know what you were doing, and you wanted to
Speaker 3: go out and wanted to see severe weather, you can
Speaker 3: actually book yourself a tour very similar to like a
Speaker 3: sherpa on Mount Everest.
Speaker 2: Right. That just encourages people, And that's that's great. You know.
Speaker 3: I love when people get to experience like mother nature
Speaker 3: and weather and all the fascination and beauty that goes
Speaker 3: along with it. But it has some downsides, which is
Speaker 3: that you know a lot of people are like, well,
Speaker 3: I don't need to pay for that. I can just
Speaker 3: go out on my own my own car, right, Like
Speaker 3: I have no training to climb Mount Everest, But nah,
Speaker 3: people do it all the time. So I'll just I'll
Speaker 3: just take a shirp and I'll just take on.
Speaker 1: Me save everybody. A lot of a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Just go rent a house in Oklahoma City for one
Speaker 1: storm season. Trust me, the storms will find you. I
Speaker 1: mean it was every afternoon. I find it crazy that
Speaker 1: people are like, yeah, I'm gonna go find a storm.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I wanted to get away from the tornadoes.
Speaker 3: I grew up me.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Dallas and then lived in Oklahoma
Speaker 1: City for such a long time. Like, man, I'm I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be down here in Austin. I'm just below.
Speaker 1: Like we may have like a small little f one
Speaker 1: every now and nothing, you know, not a big deal.
Speaker 1: I think the biggest one dropped many many years ago
Speaker 1: up in Durrell and that was a big one. But yeah,
Speaker 1: for the most part, we're pretty chill down here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: What are some other things As I'm watching the movie
Speaker 1: and I'm fascinated by this, the juxtaposition to the first
Speaker 1: one to the second one. The second one got very scientific.
Speaker 1: It was really into the science, and the Bill Paxton
Speaker 1: Helen Hunt version was not that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love the original movie right that came out when
Speaker 3: I was ten. You know, it's something that I've grown
Speaker 3: up with.
Speaker 1: Thanks for dating me, Sean. That's good. I watched was
Speaker 1: three years out of college.
Speaker 3: But going back and watching the original one idiot horribly
Speaker 3: inaccurate as far as science goes. It doesn't really use
Speaker 3: the terminology ride, it doesn't depict things in sort of
Speaker 3: this real world interesting as meteorologists, we make fun of
Speaker 3: it a lot.
Speaker 2: And one of the.
Speaker 3: Best scenes that I can give is when they launched
Speaker 3: Dorothy into the tornado. In the original movie, they show
Speaker 3: a radar image, and most people don't realize that radar
Speaker 3: image is completely wrong. It is a clear air radar image.
Speaker 3: It's velocity data that they just picked at random from
Speaker 3: like a clear air day.
Speaker 2: There's no storms on it. There's definitely no tornado on it.
Speaker 3: So, like anybody that studies radar meteorology like really pays
Speaker 3: attention to little details on things like that, that's a
Speaker 3: huge problem. Right, So when we set out to make
Speaker 3: this movie, we wanted to make sure that there were
Speaker 3: none of those little things that people could nitpick and
Speaker 3: be like.
Speaker 2: Well, this isn't real.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It is a Hollywood movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is meant to be dramatic, and it's a
Speaker 3: thrill ride and it's high octane, and therefore it is
Speaker 3: exaggerative in a lot of aspects, but everything that you
Speaker 3: see in the movie is either based on real science,
Speaker 3: real theory, or real like equipment, technology, tools, things like
Speaker 3: that that we use in the real world. And we
Speaker 3: tried to make it as authentic as possible, and I
Speaker 3: think the results are kind of speaking for themselves, right. Everybody,
Speaker 3: meteorologists and non alike, just love the movie.
Speaker 1: There's a podcast I love that Bill Simmons and his
Speaker 1: crew do called the Rewatchables, And one of the things
Speaker 1: they talk about in the Rewatchables is are these people
Speaker 1: actually is good at their jobs? You know, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, are they really good? And one
Speaker 1: of the things about Twister and Twisters, as I was
Speaker 1: talking about it with my wife, I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you keep putting yourself right in front of a
Speaker 1: tornado coming at you, and you keep getting hit by
Speaker 1: this tornado, at some point you have to think, am
Speaker 1: I good at my job? That is one of the
Speaker 1: things that I think I told her is very exaggerated.
Speaker 1: I said, the goal of a chaser is not to
Speaker 1: get in front and sit in a tornado. You actually
Speaker 1: want to not do that?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah, most people, if you're going out of you're
Speaker 3: chasing and you want to get good photos. It's really
Speaker 3: not that exciting to get a photo inside a tornado.
Speaker 3: Like you can't see anything just very you know, right,
Speaker 3: like okay, like wow, like that's a big adrenaline rush. Sure,
Speaker 3: but like picture wise, like no hold me back. I
Speaker 3: want to be able to see the structure and the
Speaker 3: whole tornado and that sort of thing. And the research
Speaker 3: that we do here at Noah's National Spear Storms Laboratory
Speaker 3: doesn't involve driving into tornadoes. We may get close, but
Speaker 3: we're trying to understand the characteristics that are feeding that storm.
Speaker 3: Right Driving into it and taking observations inside something as
Speaker 3: complex as a tornado.
Speaker 2: Doesn't really help us a whole lot.
Speaker 3: It doesn't tell us the whole picture. So like they're
Speaker 3: neat observations, sure, but like that's not really advancing the
Speaker 3: science and our understanding of So.
Speaker 1: You're telling me you've never shot fireworks into a tornado?
Speaker 2: Not yet? But you know how many.
Speaker 3: People I've had say like, hey, was that you? Like
Speaker 3: did you give them that idea in the movie. I
Speaker 3: may have a habit of playing with fireworks around the
Speaker 3: fourth of July. I give it a year somebody's going
Speaker 3: to do it right, somebody's going to describe it.
Speaker 1: I do love the fact that they called you guys,
Speaker 1: the real guys into technically thighs on this film and
Speaker 1: what were the things that you found that you were
Speaker 1: telling them in particular. And I love the fact that
Speaker 1: they said, no, I want, we want to come stormchasing
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we tried to make that work during filming,
Speaker 3: right because they were out here during tornado season. It
Speaker 3: was a little flower of the season last year compared
Speaker 3: to this year. But like, can you imagine trying to
Speaker 3: convince Universal Studios to let their multi million dollar talent
Speaker 3: in the middle of filming a movie just disappear for
Speaker 3: a day or two to go driving, you know, after
Speaker 3: a tornado.
Speaker 1: Like they were like noolutely voids of London insurance policy.
Speaker 1: You need on Glenn Powell to drive right into a tornado, right, right.
Speaker 3: So we when we got involved from from the advising
Speaker 3: and technical characteristics of the movie, there's probably not a
Speaker 3: part of the movie, to be honest, that I didn't
Speaker 3: touch me. And I had conversations with Ben Snow and
Speaker 3: Industrial Light and Magic about what Hail looks like, what
Speaker 3: tornadoes should look like. They used a lot of real
Speaker 3: footage from various chasers, including Sean Casey, that got them
Speaker 3: some footage. I had multiple conversations with the cast and
Speaker 3: with the director about terminology tune Day's line that he
Speaker 3: has in there where he's talking about the tornadoes rotating
Speaker 3: around each other, and he's like, there's a term for that.
Speaker 2: There's a term for that. Oh, who do you are? Effect?
Speaker 3: You know, that was something that I gave them that
Speaker 3: they absolutely loved because it's so nerdy and cool in
Speaker 3: the moment that you know, he got really excited about it,
Speaker 3: but they also deeply wanted to learn, like they really
Speaker 3: wanted to know what.
Speaker 2: All this meant.
Speaker 3: I taught Tunday how to do hand analysis like in
Speaker 3: the old days, right, So they were soaking in all
Speaker 3: this information, helping the playback group pick the radar imagery
Speaker 3: that they were going to use. All the radar data
Speaker 3: that you see I hand selected so.
Speaker 1: It matches up to the storm you're seeing exactly, right.
Speaker 3: Like those are real radar data cases from real events
Speaker 3: that in some way mirror what was supposed to be
Speaker 3: happening in the film, so that it's very real and
Speaker 3: it's very authentic, and I think all that basically brings
Speaker 3: it together to tell a really accurate picture of kind
Speaker 3: of what this world and what this.
Speaker 1: Environment is like working with you know, especially the two
Speaker 1: main leads in Daisy and Glenn were either one of
Speaker 1: them in particular really nerdy and into this and really
Speaker 1: wanted to hear like all the stories and the science
Speaker 1: and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Daisy especially was incredibly inquisitive when it came to this
Speaker 3: kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: We actually did.
Speaker 3: We brought them here to the Weathers Center and Rick
Speaker 3: Smith at the National Weather Center here he works for
Speaker 3: the OU Office for the National Weather Service. He actually
Speaker 3: gave them like a crash course in severe weather and
Speaker 3: storm chasing and meteorology.
Speaker 2: It was like a two hour long course.
Speaker 3: Daisy brought a notebook and she was like taking notes
Speaker 3: like she was in class, right, Like they so just
Speaker 3: love being able to immerse themselves in it. Glenn was
Speaker 3: constantly texting me, Hey, what does this mean?
Speaker 2: Like this term?
Speaker 3: Like? Am I using this right? This is what it's
Speaker 3: supposed to look like in this environment? What's a good
Speaker 3: phrase for this? How should I act? Brandon Perea, he
Speaker 3: did an incredible job with his character Boon and really
Speaker 3: bringing that kind of love and excitement to the film,
Speaker 3: and he was just as enthusiastic about learning like what
Speaker 3: meteorology is and how do we do all this kind
Speaker 3: of stuff and then being able to take them chasing.
Speaker 3: This year in April, it ended up not being a
Speaker 3: big day, Like it looked great a couple of days
Speaker 3: out and then by the time you get the engine rolling,
Speaker 3: you know, of getting everybody out.
Speaker 2: Here, it kind of fell apart.
Speaker 3: But we made the best of the day and they
Speaker 3: really loved just.
Speaker 2: Being all of that kind of come.
Speaker 3: Together and really like going out and being in Southwest Kansas,
Speaker 3: and I think probably doubting me for a good bit
Speaker 3: of the day that there were going to be storms,
Speaker 3: and then seeing storms just explode into the evening and
Speaker 3: all this structure and lightning and stuff that they hadn't
Speaker 3: seen before.
Speaker 2: It was an incredible liace.
Speaker 1: So post movie release, Daisy and Glenn go to Kansas
Speaker 1: and go storm chasing with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we went.
Speaker 3: I think it was April fifteenth this year. We were
Speaker 3: up in Southwest Kansas. It was a really late nocturnal
Speaker 3: event and they had a fighting Keep in mind, this
Speaker 3: was like a one day, thing like they were in
Speaker 3: the middle of doing other stuff dropped, everything came out
Speaker 3: here we went chasing. They had a flight out of
Speaker 3: Oklahoma City at seven am the next morning and like
Speaker 3: eleven o'clock we're up by like Dodge City.
Speaker 2: And I was like, all right, we can call it.
Speaker 3: Like I think there's you know, we're headed in the
Speaker 3: right spot, but like it's getting laid. I know, you
Speaker 3: guys got things to do. And Glenn looked at me
Speaker 3: from the back of the car and was like, I
Speaker 3: will buy property in Southwest Kansas before we call this
Speaker 3: chase off.
Speaker 2: And I was like, Ahi, man, let's going, Like let's
Speaker 2: let's keep going.
Speaker 3: You know. They were so enthusiastic and just wanted to
Speaker 3: soak it all in.
Speaker 2: It was tons of fun.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how much it's all changed. I you know,
Speaker 1: one of the last big stories I covered in Oklahoma
Speaker 1: City before I left was the big tornado outbreak in
Speaker 1: May of ninety nine and storm Chasers. It was, you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest tornado day we'd ever had in the history
Speaker 1: of the state, and the big one that came through
Speaker 1: more and teen careerpace in Midwest City del City area
Speaker 1: was late in the afternoon and it was the by
Speaker 1: far the biggest. That was the F five that came through.
Speaker 1: And so the odd thing is I would have never
Speaker 1: been sent out on that story. I was a sportscaster.
Speaker 1: But there was eighty other tornadoes or one hundred, I
Speaker 1: don't know how many were that day, and so by
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I was all that was left.
Speaker 1: And they're like, you got to go, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean, I gotta go? And so you know,
Speaker 1: I'm chasing this tornado and we didn't have to dry
Speaker 1: far because again it's very rare that they would rip
Speaker 1: through the middle of Oklahoma City, but this one was
Speaker 1: so big, so destructive it did. And I'll never forget
Speaker 1: because our technology was Gary England was on the air,
Speaker 1: and I've never heard fear in his voice, but that
Speaker 1: one day, it's the only time I've ever heard him say,
Speaker 1: if you cannot get underground, get in your car. You've
Speaker 1: got to get out of there. You're not going to live.
Speaker 1: I've never heard him say that, and I never heard
Speaker 1: him say it since. Because typically you know any new
Speaker 1: or you know weather, so we'll say don't try and
Speaker 1: out drive it. That's a terrible idea. But the other
Speaker 1: part of it that cracked me up is you're talking
Speaker 1: about technology and where we are this. You know, I
Speaker 1: couldn't see in the car, So there was a separate
Speaker 1: meteorologist that would look at a map and kind of
Speaker 1: keep track of where you were and where all the
Speaker 1: stormchasers were, and he would tell you if you were
Speaker 1: in a good position a bad position. So you're just
Speaker 1: hoping that this person was keeping an eye on you
Speaker 1: among fifty other people out in the field, and that
Speaker 1: he was going to keep you out of harm's way.
Speaker 1: It was really archaic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean nowadays, like everybody's got phones, he's
Speaker 3: got radar imagery, satellite imagery, cell phone, Internet. I mean,
Speaker 3: you have access to so much information that it makes
Speaker 3: you so easy now to go out comparatively and follow
Speaker 3: events like that. And I mean a lot of the
Speaker 3: news networks here in Oklahoma City, like they've got people
Speaker 3: on the ground, they've got holicopiers that are doing it.
Speaker 3: I mean it's nuts, right, Like you look at a
Speaker 3: lot of other like media markets across the country, and
Speaker 3: nobody else has likeing hellicockers that they use.
Speaker 2: It's pretty much just the Oklahoma City area.
Speaker 3: So it's a it's a pretty wild environment down here
Speaker 3: in Oklahoma City, especially central like Oklahoma, Elreno More. We've
Speaker 3: had our fair share of big events in the last
Speaker 3: you know, several decades for sure.
Speaker 1: How have you seen things changed just in the last
Speaker 1: month or so since Twister's no no pun intended dropped
Speaker 1: As far as the excitement of, you know, the weather serve,
Speaker 1: it's got to be fun for you because look, and
Speaker 1: I don't I mean this will all due respect, You're
Speaker 1: a weather nerd. This stuff's fun for you. This is
Speaker 1: your passion, this is your love. And so to see
Speaker 1: everybody else who is outside of Tornado Alley get so
Speaker 1: excited for weather in all this, it's got to be
Speaker 1: kind of fun for you.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I really thrive like being able to talk to people
Speaker 3: about what it is I do and the passion that
Speaker 3: I have for the severe weather work that I do
Speaker 3: and try to understand the environment around us and then
Speaker 3: turn that into warning information and communication information that kind
Speaker 3: of helps save people's lives. Right, And if you roll
Speaker 3: back and you look at the original one thirty years
Speaker 3: ago when that came out, enrollment at OU's undergraduate like
Speaker 3: meteorology program.
Speaker 2: Almost tripled for like twenty years. Right.
Speaker 3: It inspired this absolute like new generation for students coming
Speaker 3: in it saw the movie and that was their like
Speaker 3: tipping point, like, Oh that's so cool, I want to
Speaker 3: go do that. This movie is gonna do the same thing.
Speaker 3: And I feel like honored, like just truly blessed to
Speaker 3: have any hand in that, to be a part of that,
Speaker 3: to have a role in inspiring that next generation of
Speaker 3: students that is going to help us tackle some of
Speaker 3: these difficult problems that we're studying today. Only by like
Speaker 3: collaboratively working together and bringing new perspectives and ideas is
Speaker 3: how we solve big, complex problems like that. And this
Speaker 3: movie is absolutely going to do the same thing that
Speaker 3: the original one did.
Speaker 1: I'll get you out of here with a couple of
Speaker 1: rapid fire questions. Number one, what when you watch the film,
Speaker 1: and again, this is Hollywood, we were all entertained. What
Speaker 1: was the most exaggerated moment where you said, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know if we can get away with this or
Speaker 1: that's just not really how it's done.
Speaker 3: I mean, aside from the one that I mentioned earlier
Speaker 3: with just the utter lack of traffic on any of
Speaker 3: the vehicles. The most obvious one is obviously killing a tornado. Right, Like,
Speaker 3: there's and there's sort of two questions there. One is
Speaker 3: can we do it? And there's no theory really to
Speaker 3: suggest that we can or that anybody's trying.
Speaker 1: Next question, by the way, can we tame a tornado?
Speaker 3: Right? I'm jumping your question here, But there's a deeper question,
Speaker 3: which is should we even if we.
Speaker 2: Could, interesting, should we be stopping things like that? Right?
Speaker 3: Because the weather as we experienced it, every heat wave,
Speaker 3: every cold front, every raindrop, hailstone, tornado, hurricane, all of
Speaker 3: that is a balancing act of the Earth trying to
Speaker 3: redistribute energy. Right, It's all a consequence of it trying
Speaker 3: to like return to a neutral state. If you throw
Speaker 3: a wrench into that engine, what's gonna happen? Right, Because
Speaker 3: we really don't understand how that complexity works. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: if we start screwing around with things like trying to
Speaker 3: stop a tornado that's attempting to release energy, you're now
Speaker 3: charging the battery so to speak.
Speaker 2: Right, where's that energy going to go?
Speaker 1: What's the butterfly effect of that?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? What's it going to do? Downstream?
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of interesting questions with that, but
Speaker 3: that's probably the most over the top exaggerated thing out
Speaker 3: of the movie is, you know, killing a tornado.
Speaker 1: Glenn Pal's truck that you know, digs down like a
Speaker 1: foot into soft dirt and he pulls into a tornado.
Speaker 1: First of all, the shrapnel, there's no two by fours
Speaker 1: going through the side of his car, and he's not
Speaker 1: being thrown around. Pretty unrealistic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And I mean there's a few people that
Speaker 4: have what I'm gonna call tornado tanks right that that
Speaker 4: do try to drive into tornadoes, and they're moderately successful
Speaker 4: at those, but there's a hidden limit.
Speaker 3: In there that they don't really talk about, which is
Speaker 3: that they largely do lower end tornadoes. And it's not
Speaker 3: the wind that's the problem, like you said, it's what's
Speaker 3: in the wind, right, Like your car could probably take
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty mile an hour wind, it's not
Speaker 3: going to take it two by four hitting your car
Speaker 3: at ninety So like that debris is what really starts
Speaker 3: to cause a lot of issues. And Tyler Struck certainly
Speaker 3: survives most of those tornadoes.
Speaker 2: Without having anything hit it.
Speaker 3: But you do see at the after the final sequence
Speaker 3: when they do some close ups, there's pin cushion stuff
Speaker 3: all over the.
Speaker 2: Inside of that to kind of stimulate that debris stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then, and I know things have advanced, So I guess
Speaker 1: my last question is I was going to piggyback off,
Speaker 1: you know, can we tame a tornado?
Speaker 2: Is?
Speaker 1: What are we trying to do? You know, yes, warning
Speaker 1: systems have gotten better, but as someone who grew up
Speaker 1: in Tornado Alley and still essentially lives here, things haven't
Speaker 1: gotten that much more advanced.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: You know, we see the hook echo, you can kind
Speaker 1: of see these storms come in, but really when and
Speaker 1: where they drop and why is still a bit of
Speaker 1: a mystery at this point.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean, twenty thirty years ago, average warning lead time
Speaker 3: was like a minute or two for tornado warnings, right
Speaker 3: most of them were either unwarned or you had no.
Speaker 2: Warning at all.
Speaker 3: Right Now, our average warning time is like thirteen minutes.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a pretty good amount of time, to
Speaker 3: the point where we actually have people from a social
Speaker 3: science perspective that are trying to figure out, if we
Speaker 3: give you.
Speaker 2: More time, is that a good thing? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Because then people start like, oh, well, I got twenty minutes.
Speaker 3: You know, I can worry about that later. Well.
Speaker 1: It was kind of the scene in the film I
Speaker 1: thought was very poignant was they were in they ran
Speaker 1: into that motel, and the girl goes, oh, no, these
Speaker 1: are always fifth warnings. Don't worry about it. You know.
Speaker 1: We get kind of lase fair about this stuff.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and that's one of the big like markers of
Speaker 3: things that we're trying to handle today. We know large
Speaker 3: scale conditions that are largely conducive for tornadoes, right what
Speaker 3: we don't know is why one stor in that environment
Speaker 3: will produce one and one won't even though they're in
Speaker 3: the same environment, Or why one storm has got a
Speaker 3: tornado that's like ten yards wide and was on the
Speaker 3: ground for four seconds, but twenty miles away is a
Speaker 3: storm that's got a tornado that's two miles wide has
Speaker 3: been on the ground for forty five minutes. We don't
Speaker 3: understand the difference that's causing those, and in that we
Speaker 3: also don't quite know how to decrease that false alarm ratio.
Speaker 3: Most of our tornadoes nowadays are warned, But the other
Speaker 3: side of that is that we also have a lot
Speaker 3: of false alarms along with you, and we want to
Speaker 3: avoid that cry wolf situation. So a lot of the
Speaker 3: work that we're doing now and the research that we're
Speaker 3: doing here at no a's National Sphere Storms Laboratory, is
Speaker 3: trying to understand why individual storms produce tornadoes, what causes
Speaker 3: them to be so large and variable, and then ultimately
Speaker 3: what causes them to dissipate. That's a process we really
Speaker 3: don't understand and that's a lot of our focus today.
Speaker 1: Well, worst case scenario and I'll just say this is
Speaker 1: my PSA, go spend thirty minutes in a bathtub, in
Speaker 1: your closet or in your storm shelter. You'll be glad
Speaker 1: you did it just in case. Absolutely, you and I
Speaker 1: have both seen the destruction of these things and you
Speaker 1: do not want to be on the back end of
Speaker 1: one that comes through your house. But John, I appreciate
Speaker 1: it very much.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: It's you know, the film was brilliant and you're the
Speaker 1: expertise you added and that layer that you guys added,
Speaker 1: there was a discernible difference between that first one in
Speaker 1: ninety six with Bill Paxton and what was done with
Speaker 1: Glenn Palell and Daisy on this one, and so well done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a ton of fun making it. I know,
Speaker 3: the cast and the crew really enjoyed it. And at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, honestly, these are friends and
Speaker 3: family to me now, like everybody was so connected, and really,
Speaker 3: you know, Isaac has said this several times, he really
Speaker 3: wanted to bring out that Oklahoma spirit, you know, that
Speaker 3: resiliency that you see after you know, horrible events like these,
Speaker 3: you know, types of events that happened.
Speaker 2: It actually tends to bring out the best.
Speaker 3: In communities and in people at large, and he really
Speaker 3: wanted to try to capture that and tell that in story,
Speaker 3: and I think he did an incredible job with that.
Speaker 1: One of my most memorable moments wasn't you know April nineteenth,
Speaker 1: after the Murrah Federal Building bombing in ninety five, or
Speaker 1: even the tornadoes in ninety nine. It was the days
Speaker 1: that followed, in the outpouring of love of Oklahoma's and
Speaker 1: how people come together. And then in the days that
Speaker 1: followed that tornado outbreak. I remember I would be out
Speaker 1: in front of Channel nine and we set up all
Speaker 1: these trucks and feed the children was there and people
Speaker 1: were just filling trucks full of clothes and donations and
Speaker 1: you're right that that's showing that community, and it struck me.
Speaker 1: I had a good friend, a fraternity brother who passed
Speaker 1: away who lived in Areno. We spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time in Areno, and so for the pin ultimate I
Speaker 1: won't give too much away, no spoilers, but the pin
Speaker 1: ultimate moment happening in Areno was a very very cool
Speaker 1: thing to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, we do a lot of severe
Speaker 2: weatherwork here.
Speaker 3: You know, tornadoes obviously, but I've also done a lot
Speaker 3: of hurricanes, and some of the best in humanity that
Speaker 3: I've seen has come out in hurricane environments. We actually
Speaker 3: got trapped on of what then became an island, you know,
Speaker 3: in North Carolina, because we got cut off by floodwaters,
Speaker 3: and I watched the community come together in a way
Speaker 3: that I'd never seen before. Societal structure disappeared, racial barriers,
Speaker 3: financial barriers, like everybody was just human at that point
Speaker 3: and everybody was working together to help each other out.
Speaker 3: And it's really nice to see things like that nowadays.
Speaker 3: And it's terrible that it brings something, you know, that
Speaker 3: it has something so devastating to have to bring that out.
Speaker 2: But with all the negativity in the world.
Speaker 3: It's really nice sometimes to focus on the good things
Speaker 3: that happen.
Speaker 1: Amazing how mother nature can humble us and then put
Speaker 1: us all on the same level. And No, but the movie. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: if you've not seen Twisters, go see it. I can't
Speaker 1: recommend it enough, and I am biased. I will say
Speaker 1: I spent so much time in Oklahoma. I have so
Speaker 1: much love for the people of Oklahoma. But the soundtrack,
Speaker 1: the acting, the action. You know, one of the things
Speaker 1: I loved about the original was just the pace of
Speaker 1: it was so fast and so crazy, and I love
Speaker 1: that the story felt the same, but it wasn't redundant,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. They were able to take it
Speaker 1: in a different direction. But then, you know, the Easter eggs.
Speaker 1: If you see the first one, you don't need to
Speaker 1: see the first one, but if you do, there was
Speaker 1: enough Easter eggs in there that were really, really fun
Speaker 1: that just made it a great movie. So congratulations on
Speaker 1: whatever part you had in it. To say you had
Speaker 1: a part is a wonderful thing. It's something that really
Speaker 1: left the market. Hey, you're you're responsible for partly bringing
Speaker 1: back the next Barbenheimer. You know, we have Deadpool and
Speaker 1: Twisters now, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's been so much fun. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm already looking forward to the steeple.
Speaker 1: Let's put it that one always there, by the way,
Speaker 1: is there's going to be another?
Speaker 3: I mean they kind of I mean right, they kind
Speaker 3: of left it out like, yeah, there might be you know,
Speaker 3: so we'll see what Hollywood decides to do with things.
Speaker 3: I think everybody really enjoyed making it, so it would
Speaker 3: not shock me, not that I have any inside information
Speaker 3: at all, but like it would not shine.
Speaker 1: I do have inside information. When a movie does eighty
Speaker 1: point five million in the box office and opening weekend,
Speaker 1: they tend to go back to the well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's twisters. There's twisters. Now look forward to twisters.
Speaker 2: Is yeah. I think we just keep adding assets, just
Speaker 2: keep arding uses. Sean.
Speaker 1: I appreciate your time and thanks for looking out for
Speaker 1: everybody and continuing the work you do on a serious note,
Speaker 1: much less helping out one of the great movies.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thanks for listening.
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Speaker 1: us five stars. I'll talk to you next time.