Corrected entry: Isn't it oddly convenient that a side road was available whenever they needed one?
Corrected entry: In the scene where Hunt and Paxton's crew drive onto a smaller side road surrounded by cornfields, Rabbit says he can't figure out what road they're on, and depreciatingly calls it "Bob's Road" as he scours his maps. However, in the forward shots, you can see they're actually driving on a paved road, complete with black-and-white highway signs.
Correction: That doesn't mean that he can find the name of the road on the map. There are plenty of roads around me that are paved with signs, but good luck finding a name on a map.
Corrected entry: In many scenes, the red dodge truck doesn't have an antenna, but yet they are using the radio.
Correction: The Dodge truck has a number of after market upgrades to make it function better in storms; a smaller and stronger antenna would make sense as it would be less likely to be damaged by the high wind conditions it would be subjected to. These are commonly as small as one inch or can be installed as a wire on the inside of the rear window of a truck, making it essentially invisible to a movie viewer.
Corrected entry: The aluminum cans they use to make Dorothy fly are Pepsi cans. Later, when they see the twister pattern on the computer screen, very briefly it assumes the shape of a Pepsi logo. Hidden commercial?
Correction: What you're actually seeing when you see the "Pepsi symbol" are really Doppler radar images. That particular one is showing radial velocities, indicating rotation and a possible tornado. Check this out, and tilt your head to either direction and you will see your "Pepsi symbol". http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/remote/lecture_notes/radar/doppler/graphics/sd_prof_veer.gif.
Corrected entry: Aunt Meg's house is destroyed by the tornado, but her spindly metal lawn ornaments remain upright, intact, and in working order? Hmmm...
Correction: Those ornaments were homemade wind/tornado detectors. They're all designed to spin around with the wind so there is almost no surface area for the storm to knock over unlike a house or truck.
Corrected entry: The first time we see the bad guy, his entourage is overtaking the good guys, yet in every other car scene the good guys have no trouble outrunning them.
Correction: More than likely the "good guys" are allowing the "bad guys" to overtake them, they are not driving their vehicles as fast as they can go.
Corrected entry: The team communicated via CB. How did the team hear Joe & Bill talk about her fathers death when they were standing in the rain, when no one was keying the mike in order to transmit?
Correction: She's using a hands-free mike, meaning that you don't need to key the mike or anything.
Corrected entry: Why did they need to make those fans out of the aluminium cans to make the sensors fly? If things like trucks, cows and tractors can so easily be picked up and thrown around by a tornado then surely a little sensor can too? Maybe they needed the sponsorship from Pepsi?
Correction: It's so that the balls are a bit heavier and don't just blow away when the twister gets near - obviously, before a twister strikes, the winds will be high, therefore the balls are likely to blow away before they get into the middle of the twister.
Corrected entry: When Bill prepares Dorothy II, it takes him about a minute. When he prepares Dorothy IV, all he has to do is flip a switch and it takes him about 2 seconds.
Correction: The scene in question also has various cuts and double shots to make it look longer than it is. Essentially, Bill and Jo both prepped Dorothy the same way (activated the buttons and turned the sirens on), but for Bill's scene, he also did a few more unnecessary things to prep her (adjusting the camera, doing something with the Doppler dish) to make the scene longer.
Corrected entry: In multiple scenes in the movie, you see objects flying through the air like the cow, yet the tornado itself is a good distance away (at least a half mile). This simply isn't possible, in fact, at that distance from a tornado you normally will either have calm air or strong DOWNDRAFTS, certainly not objects floating around. Only in the tornado itself will objects be flying in the air, and they basically will be lifted up, then dropped, as the tornado passes over.
Correction: It seems you're mistaking the funnel (or condensation) cloud for the tornado itself when really it's a *part* of the tornado. The areas around the condensation cloud (particularly in the inward flow boundary where wind goes from horizontal to vertical) are wracked with violent winds. In images of tornadoes that touch down, the inward flow boundary is often seen as a fountain of dust and debris shooting up in the air near where the funnel touches down. This is where the characters are situated during these scenes. They are not a half-mile away from the tornado... they are *in* the tornado, just not in the core of it.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Bill is loading the newly modified sensors (with the aluminum can "propellers" on them) into Dorothy, Dusty hands him the first box and when Bill dumps them, Dorothy appears to be full - some sensors even pile up and spill out. But subsequent boxes are dumped with no problem; Dorothy is not nearly as full.
Correction: You have to remember that there are 2 Dorothy's on the truck this time and when the first one over flowed, they filled the second one.
No, for the second and last attempt there is only one Dorothy in the truck's bed.
But for that scene in question, there were two Dorothys loaded onto the back of the truck to make it easier for them to do multiple intercept attempts.
Corrected entry: Near the beginning of the movie, Jo mentions how NSSL has not seen a storm like this in years. She would actually be getting real-time forecast data from the Storm Prediction Center, SPC. NSSL deals primarily in research, not daily forecasting.
Corrected entry: At the end of the movie, after the F5 tornado, the horses on the farm seem to be completely unharmed, not to mention well-groomed. Anyone care to explain how they not only survived, but didn't even seem to be affected at all? Even if they were by the house, which the tornado didn't take, the wind would have at least messed up their manes.
Correction: Tornados are a strange phenomenon and can easily destroy half of a house and leave the other half totally untouched - not even so much as moving papers on a desk. The wind is, for the most part, contained within the cone of the tornado itself so the horses could look as if they were not even near the tornado.
Corrected entry: In the beginning when Jo and her parents are in the storm cellar, Jo's dad is trying to hold the door shut for dear life. Finally he gets sucked away by the tornado, leaving Jo and her mom sad and alone in the cellar, but completely unharmed nonetheless. Why was it such a priority to hold the door shut if nothing gets sucked out of there, and nothing is harmed in any way, when the door is gone?
Correction: Jo and her mom were fine because the tornado passed over them. Her father managed to hold the doors closed just long enough to spare them, but he still got sucked out.
It's unlikely that the door stayed shut as long as it did because he held it. Really, he should not have even attempted to hold the door, he could have just as easily stayed safe had he simply remained huddled with with his family in a corner away from the door.
Corrected entry: At the end when the fuel truck blows up in front of them, they drive right through the flames and hit no debris of the truck. The truck would not just entirely disintegrate and be no debris to hit, especially the steel semi frame.
Correction: It's clear that Bill turns right to go around the end of the truck.
Corrected entry: At the end, Bill and Jo decide to strap themselves to a pipe with belts. Any kind of weather expert would know that this is probably the most unsafe thing to do as they would obviously be shredded to pieces by debris. Perhaps the safest thing to do in this case would be to lie flat down under the pipes, arm and legs spread out.
Correction: For a small to mid-sized tornado maybe. But this is a tornado that has picked up semi trucks and sent entire houses rolling. Their only chance at this point is to anchor themselves to the ground so they don't get picked up too.
Corrected entry: In the scene at the Drive-In movie, when they all get hit by the "F4," you will notice that almost their entire fleet, including the Ford Pickup, and the Ford station wagon, are totally trashed, yet a few scenes later, after they rescue Aunt Meg, on their way to dump the sensors into the remaining Dorothys, the entire fleet is present and accounted for. By the way, where was the Dodge Ram during that entire garage sequence?
Correction: Not quite. Only Beltzer's van, Dusty's Barn Burner and the other camper truck are present, seen most in the sunrise bridge clip. Even when they're stopping on a different bridge to load the Dorothys, there are only the three vehicles.
Corrected entry: During the movie the actors use radios all the time. They talk to each other and others talk and everybody hears it over the radio like they are all plugged in to a single radio. If everybody talks at the same time over a radio channel from different transmitters all you would hear would be a lot of garbage from all the mixed signals. Jo and a few others wear radio headsets for 47 MHz radios and we can hear them over the CB radios in the vehicles on 27 MHz. If everyone is supposed to be able to hear each other over the radio, why does Jo always have to change the CB channel, wouldn't they all be on the same channel?
Correction: The one that they were listening to could have been on a "receive only" setting, I have seen these used by flight and sky diving instructors.
Corrected entry: When the red truck goes through the house, you can see chairs and other things standing up when the house is on its side.
Correction: The house just rolled over into the road...unless things are bolted to the floor they are going to move around a LOT. Having upright furniture is not that big of a surprise.
Corrected entry: If Bill just bought a new red truck, why does it have a radio to talk to other people in other cars?
Correction: He could have had it fitted - he might not need it, but he may have a use for it...
He is a weather forecaster and a former storm chaser; only makes sense that he would have a form of communication.
Correction: In flat farm country like Kansas, or eastern North Dakota where I grew up, county roads are set up in a fairly regular grid pattern to allow access to fields. This can be easily confirmed on Google Earth.