The summer hit Twisters asks the question “Can you tame a tornado?” The film concludes with a successful outcome but we want to find out if this is something that could be made a reality. Tornadoes are inherently unstable and are formed when heat is rising from the ground on a warm day, it reaches the cooler air above and condenses into clouds. The more warm air there is, the larger these clouds become, eventually forming thunderstorms.
If you combine this with strong winds going in different directions at different altitudes, you will create a wind shear which rotates horizontally in the atmosphere, this is essential for the formation of a tornado. The updraught from the rising warm air will tilt this wind shear vertically, the strong rotational forces create a funnel cloud from the cloud base where moisture is continually getting pulled into the potential tornado’s vortex. Downdraughts of cooler air support the funnel and focus the vortex towards the earth.
It’s only when the funnel touches the ground that it can be classified as a tornado, which is why you see some tornadoes begin to form but never actually ‘touch down’ as there was insufficient wind speed and moisture. The solution provided in the film was to introduce a polyacrylate into the main funnel of the tornado, which would extract the moisture causing the tornado to collapse in on itself. In the opening scene we see the female lead, Kate, attempt this but doesn’t have enough of this chemical to impact the force of the tornado.
Moisture in the air acts as fuel to a tornado, much like oxygen is fuel to fire, you starve a fire of oxygen and it will die out, the same principle applies to moisture and tornadoes with no moisture a tornado can not sustain itself. Now it is true that some specific polyacrylates are super absorbent polymers which can hold up to one thousand limes their own weight in water. For example, sodium polyacrylate can absorb up to 800 times its weight in pure water, but this is reduced to only 300 times for something like tap water due to the mineral content.
It is the dust and debris that make the tornado more visible so it is likely this would cause issues when trying to replicate the film’s theory in real life.