#jarrell

The final tornado of the film is the infamous F5, which is the highest you can go on the Fujita Scale. It ends up being a mile-wide wedge tornado, traveling across open fields and destroying mostly farming structures and very few homes.

Our protagonists approach the storm in what’s called a “core punch.” It’s an incredibly dangerous maneuver as you have to travel through the rainy (and often hailing) section of the storm to get to the a more favorable side of the tornado. This is especially dangerous if the tornado is rain-wrapped, which means it’s not very visible through the rain, but this move can be dicey in any tornadic storm.

The F5’s unexpected turn catches the seasoned storm chasers off guard, resulting in the death of a few of them and injuries to several others. Storm chaser deaths are actually quite rare, and when the film was initially released in 1996, no storm chasers had ever been killed while on the job. That has unfortunately changed since then, but it’s still an incredibly rare occurrence.

The El Reno 2013 Tornado

At 2.6 miles wide, the El Reno tornado is the widest tornado on record. The storm began in the rural area south of the town El Reno, Oklahoma, quickly growing in intensity as it moved across the land. Like its fictional counterpart, it changed directions so fast that many storm chasers were taken by surprise.

This video is from the Weather Channel’s Mike Bette, who was core punching it when it turned into them. The vehicle flipped over multiple times, but he and his his crew survived with relatively mild injuries.

This tornado also unfortunately claimed the lives of three storm chasers, making it the first time any storm chasers died while on the job. This happened 17 years after the deaths of chasers in the film Twister, so it’s truly a rare situation.

Unlike the storm chasers in Twister, however, the three men who lost their lives were widely respected in the chasing community. Tim Samaras was a fairly safe chaser, and often made appearances on the Discover Channels show Storm Chaser. At the time of El Reno, he was contributing to National Geographic. He had his son, Paul, with him on this trip, as well as meteorologist Carl Young.

The following footage was submitted to National Geographic in the week leading up to El Reno. None of the footage from the TWISTEX team of El Reno has ever been released (if it exists). Another storm chaser, Dan Robinson, was ahead of them on the highway when the tornado overtook them. He caught the incident with his rear-facing camera, but out of respect for the families, it also hasn’t been released.

The three men were part of the TWISTEX project, which, like the chasers in Twister, had the ultimate goal of understanding tornadoes better and increasing lead time for the warning system. Also like the film, this required getting in front of the tornado and releasing probes, which would take measurements of the storm.

Despite its enormous size and notable deaths, the El Reno tornado is only rated an EF3. This issue is hotly debated in the tornado community because the Enhanced Fujita Scale (see more in Part 1) largely categorized tornadoes based on damage analysis. As El Reno was mostly over open fields, there wasn’t much damage to analyze.

I’m sort of hyper focused on this tornado, so I have a 2-hour playlist featuring first-hand video of most of the major incidents during the event, as well as analysis and mapping of it. If you have two hours to spare, here’s my El Reno playlist. But hopefully I’ve summarized the main points for those of you with less time.

Jarrell, TX 1997 Tornado

While the El Reno tornado happened mostly over open fields, the Jarrell tornado impacted a residential neighborhood. I already briefly mentioned this one in Part 1 due to its unique path (northeast to southwest), but it’s also notable for just how slow it was. It rolled into the Double Creek subdivision of Jarrell and stalled.

It churned over the community for several minutes until there was nothing left. Concrete slabs sat where homes once were, trees had been stripped of bark, and the ground was scoured to a depth of 18 inches. The tornado claimed 27 lives.

As this tornado occurred prior to the change to the Enhanced Fujita Scale, it has a solid F5 rating. It had become one of the most definitive F5’s in history. It occurred just one year after the film Twister.