July 2024

Chasing the Wind: Twister

This article originally appeared in AC, May 1996. Twister is an action-adventure story about an unusual breed of meteorologists who behave more like Indiana Jones than TV weathermen. The story (written by Michael Crichton) may be fiction, but these people really do exist. Known as "storm chasers," they run the gamut from serious scientists to thrill-seeking maniacs. The first storm-chaser was probably Dorman Newman, who lived in England during the reign of Charles II. Newman left one of the earliest detailed accounts of severe weather in his “Narrative" of the winter storms that hit the British Isles, Holland and France in 1662. “Histories," Newman said, “are the best explainers of such WhirleWinds, being taken from...more