Continuity mistake: During the big falling debris scene, Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt are in the red truck. The truck hits a combine auger. The impact damages the windshield, and it is broken, but a second later the windshield is perfect and untouched. (01:34:00)
Continuity mistake: After leaving Aunt Meg's the first time, Jo and Bill are in the red truck. Bill says, "Ok, let's get you wired." When Jo looks over at him you can see that she already has the headphones around her neck. Then they cut to Bill and when he goes to put the headphones on her neck is bare. (00:53:20)
Continuity mistake: When Jo's truck is lifted by the first tornado they encounter, it is dropped on the road in front of the red dodge driven by Bill's fiancée. When we see the truck drop, the drivers window is closed. As the dodge swerves to avoid hitting the other truck, the window is now opened. And finally, in the last shot where everyone is running to her aide, the window is closed again. (00:34:05)
Continuity mistake: Towards the beginning of the movie when Melissa goes on the chase after they leave Meg's, she is under an umbrella with her hair dry. They cut away go back, she is drenched, cut away go back she is soaked, go back again, she is wet. (01:00:05)
Continuity mistake: When Jo's truck lands in the road, right after which Jonas' crew drives by, if you look quickly, you can see that the driver side (the truck was upside down) window is gone. Yet, when Jo goes to get her backpack out, she has to kick that window out. (00:35:25)
Continuity mistake: When they make their pit stop at the BBQ diner Bill is outside with Dusty and says, "we're going green". The sky is dark and green. When Jo comes out and they're ready to go a few minutes later, the sky is almost sunny and it's suddenly partly cloudy. (00:25:10)
Visible crew/equipment: When Bill's fiance is driving over after the first tornado, when the truck lands, she swerves and she stops. As she is getting out, a camera is visible. When the camera backs up though, a crew-member pulling it back is visible in the door.
Continuity mistake: When Bill is going over the divorce papers, he comes to the page missing Jo's signature. It only has one red arrow near top right. When he hands it to Jo, she starts looking at it, then flips up page to look at others, and the missing signature page is a completely different page with two red arrows, one toward the top and another, on the right, toward the bottom. (00:12:25)
Continuity mistake: Near the beginning, when Bill and Melissa have gone to get the divorce papers, Bill leaves Melissa talking to Dusty. When Dusty starts telling her about the "suck zone" there are a couple of black cows behind Dusty. Next, Jo comes over to meet Melissa and when the camera pans to the same area behind Dusty, there are no cows. (00:12:50)
Suggested correction: The scale back then was based on the size of the tornado, it's only more recently it is based on damage. So during the time of the movie, the scale was being used correctly for size not damage.
The Fujita scale was introduced in 1971 and was in use during the 90's when this film came out. The Fujita scale measured the damage caused by a tornado to man-made structures after ground or aerial surveys, it was not a measurement of tornado size (an F5 tornado is a tornado that's rated on the Fujita scale). It is true the Fujita scale was replaced by the enhanced Fujita scale in 2007, but that was only to align the ratings to the damage better, it did not change rating tornadoes from size to destructive powers.
Bishop73