The Twister Tornado Mystery - The Search for Lost Footage of the Tornado on the Cover of Twister

The tornado featured on the cover of the classic 1996 movie, Twister, has always intrigued me. When I was a little kid, I had this Twister movie poster on my bedroom wall, and I would always stare at that menacing-looking tornado. As a kid, I thought, oh dang, that looks super deadly and scary and dark. That must have caused a lot of damage and killed a lot of people. I mean, back in the day, this was one of the very few high-quality tornado images that I could find. This was before all the crazy high-resolution tornado photos that we have all over the internet today. So this photo, in a way, kind of defined what a tornado should look like to me. Like, I thought if there was a tornado outside at any given moment, it probably would look like this, and it was probably coming straight towards me. And that freaked me out, but also got me really into tornadoes. Of course, I have since moved on and seen thousands of high-quality tornado images, but still, to this day, this tornado photo still interests me quite a bit. It is, in some ways, the perfect tornado image. The tornado is backlit, making it look dark and eerie, and it features that classic cone shape that most people think when they think tornado. And it might honestly be the most seen tornado image ever. And here's the thing, for it being one of the most viewed tornadoes ever, not many people know about the real-life origins of this image. Where did it come from? What real tornado is this? Where did it occur? Was this particular photo heavily edited and photoshopped to make it look scary? And most importantly, is there video of this tornado? Especially a video that was taken at the same angle as this image. Because if I could find a video of this portion that looks like this image, that would really satisfy my childhood curiosities. Now, last year, I did an iconic tornado photos and locations video. And I did talk about the Twister Movie Cover Tornado briefly in that video. But there have since been several updates. Several people have reached out to me with more information. So what is the full story of this mysterious tornado? Do we finally have a decent video of it? This is the surprisingly interesting and unlikely story of the mysterious Twister Movie Cover Tornado. But before we unravel the mystery, we gotta talk about today's video sponsor, Into The AM. If you are one who likes to express yourself, someone who enjoys wearing creative and unique clothing, then I highly recommend checking out Into The AM. Into The AM is a premier graphic t-shirt slash clothing company with some of the coolest, most creative t-shirt designs out there. Seriously though, these designs were handcrafted by Into The AM's elite team of artists. They're like wearable works of art. 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So to begin our story on the origins of the Twister movie cover, we must look at, well, the movie Twister. This is it. Yep. Now this particular tornado does not occur in the movie. I mean, if you've seen Twister, you know that this doesn't, I mean, there's a similar scene where they're running from, it's not this tornado. Okay. It's like a CGI tornado. There are actually several different versions of the cover featuring the same tornado in different scenarios. The best image I could find actually comes from the soundtrack cover and it's a little extended. So it gives us a little more information. So we know that Twister came out in 1996, which means that this particular tornado occurred in the years prior sometime in the 1990s. Historically, many have actually thought that this was an image of the 1995 Pampa, Texas tornado. The June 8, 1995 Pampa, Texas tornado was quite a significant tornado event. It was actually part of a larger tornado outbreak that featured 28 other tornadoes that impacted much of West Texas, including the entire Panhandle. The tornado that impacted Pampa specifically was later rated as an F4 with winds over 200 miles per hour. And this tornado was extremely well-documented by numerous storm chasers. One particular man who filmed the Pampa tornado was local sheriff, Randy Stubblefield. And he was able to film some of the most incredible tornado footage ever captured. The Pampa F4 only had a path of about three miles, which is pretty short compared to most tornadoes, but it was still able to cause significant damage and injure seven individuals. Interesting note about the Pampa F4 tornado, the wind speeds may have been some of the highest ever filmed. Tornado historian Thomas Grazulis stated that if an F6 tornado had ever been filmed, it would be the Pampa, Texas F4. Now the reason why it didn't receive an F5 rating is due to the actual lack of damage. Like this tornado only moved a few heavy equipment things that apparently were super heavy and that's why the wind speeds were crazy. But yeah, this video definitely shows the intense drill bit nature of the tornado. After looking at the footage, one can see that there are a lot of similarities with this tornado and the tornado featured on the cover of Twister. It has a very similar cone shape. It was backlit by the sun, giving it that dark silhouette look. And it was also very dusty. And it occurred in 1995 during the production of the Twister movie. It seems like a good candidate. However, this is not the Twister movie cover tornado, although it does share a lot of similarities with the actual tornado. So the actual Twister movie cover tornado occurred only a few miles to the northeast near Miami, Texas, a year prior on May 28, 1994. How do we know this? Well, because we know who took this photo. It was taken by storm chaser tornado photographer Warren Fadley. Warren Fadley, he did he did a lot of images of tornadoes on books back in the day. So if you had like a book about tornadoes, he likely took the photo that was featured on the cover of that book. He's kind of one of the OG storm chasers. And Warren Fadley stated that this specific tornado, the one featured on the Twister movie cover, occurred near Miami, Texas, around 8pm on May 28, 1994. So of course, I had to hop onto the archive. And there it is. There's the tornado out in the middle of nowhere. There's really not too much information about this tornado. It did eventually receive an F1 rating. But we know what it is. And that's perfect. Let's just look up a video of a tornado that occurred on that date. But when you search that this is the only video that you find. We don't want to lose sight of that at all. Got a cone coming down? Possible. Yeah. I think that's a cone starting to drop. You think this is a good place? It's good for now. Yeah. Now we can see still dust. There's dust on the ground. There's dust on the ground. Let's get out. It's starting to rotate. Oh, oh, goodness. It's a tornado. Tornado on the ground. Oh, this was actually a pretty awesome once in a lifetime at tornado chase. So on that day, according to the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, the chances of a tornado were incredibly slim. There was some potential for supercell formation. But the experts believe that the elements just weren't there for tornado Genesis. In fact, a major tornado research project at the time known as the vortex project took the day off. And there was also a storm chasing get together barbecue up in Norman, Oklahoma that day. So essentially, nobody chased this storm. This particular video was captured by some Oklahoma University students, specifically Stephen Curtin, Casey Crosby and John Finch. They were just bored one evening. So they decide, hey, some of the elements are there. Let's take our chances. Let's go see if we can see a tornado, even though the odds are low. And it definitely paid off incredibly out of nowhere and isolated supercell formed over the panhandle. And just look at this satellite imagery. It's all alone. What a unique meteorological event. This tornado also proved to be quite gorgeous. And it was pretty safe to chase as it occurred far away from any town or any roads. It really was out in the middle of nowhere over some Texas plains. So when does it take the appearance of this? Well, I watched the entire video and it cuts from this to this. Now, this portion of the video does show some potential. I mean, while it's roping out, you can kind of see that it's at an angle similar to the Twister movie cover. So that got me a little excited. And there's also this extremely brief clip that shows the tornado angled when it was more organized. And you can see it's definitely wider at the top, kind of like the Twister movie cover. But clearly the angle is way off. In fact, the sun is shining directly on it, which means that Warren Failey must have been on the other side of the tornado to get that backlit appearance. I wanted to see more of their video since they cut it halfway through. So I actually looked up some of the storm chasers and I came across an old blog from one of the chasers named John Finch. John Finch described the day as one of the best chases he had ever been on. This is one of the most memorable and enjoyable storm chases. Project Vortex did not have operations on this day. There was a storm chasers barbecue in Norman, Oklahoma with many chasers in attendance. I saw no storm chasers on this day. These were the good old days when you could chase storms in solitude with nature. Storm chasing is not the same these days. Throngs of people read the Storm Prediction Center outlooks and then watch for radar echoes to develop in the risk areas. It is nearly impossible to find a storm without throngs of chasers all over the place. But he then continues to talk about how amazing the tornado itself was and even features a series of photos of the tornado. Most of them just show the tornado as a cone reaching the ground. Nothing too crazy. But there were a couple that were promising. This photo as well as this photo. They do have some similarities to the Twister movie cover. While the similarities are there with this event and the cover, to me they still look like super different events. I mean with the Twister movie cover so scary and dark and creepy and these just look like a nice cute tornado out in the middle of the field. The sky was off and the only time it was at an angle was when it was roping out. It doesn't have that strong form like the Twister movie cover. This photo in particular though does show some structure and the wall cloud does kind of match quite well. It became pretty clear to me at this point that the photo taken by Warren Fadley definitely was on the other side of the tornado where it was I mean obviously the trade-off was angled in the opposite direction. For this reason I knew I had to find the tornado photo location. That to me would begin to answer a lot of questions. I reached out to Warren Fadley himself and he was a bit too busy. He didn't quite tell me the location. Maybe he doesn't remember the location. So I decided to hop onto google maps and search myself. I went all throughout the roads near Miami and out in the country hoping to find some of these structures that were featured in the foreground of the Twister movie cover. This tower in particular was of much interest to me. It's a cool looking tower. I searched all over for it and I continued to search and search and search but unfortunately I was unsuccessful. I even began to wonder if this whole thing was somehow misremembered and that this photo really was of the Pampa F4 in 1995. So I posted my iconic tornado photos youtube video last year and fellow youtuber Rojo Fern actually knew the location of where Warren Fadley took this image and left this comment. The foreground buildings in Fadley's shots of the Miami tornado do exist. Fadley paralleled the tornado moving south on highway 70 until reaching Antelope Hills Road where he turned off to get his final few photos. The trees obscuring the building in the photo are actually about halfway between the shot location and the building behind it which is at the very end of the road. They surround a small pond which ironically means that the dodge in the poster would actually be submerged in the water. Of course I had to get on google earth and google maps to try to figure all this out and I found Antelope Hills Road but unfortunately it's private property. It was really quite disappointing because I really I wanted to see that tower in real life if it still existed. At this point I was pretty upset and I decided to go back to youtube slash the internet archive to search for more videos of the tornado. Warren Fadley himself actually posted a video of the but it doesn't look anything quite like the cover. It mostly just shows the roping out stage up close and it's a lot brighter. It doesn't look dark and menacing so it really didn't satisfy my curiosities. I continued looking for more footage but since it was a barely chased tornado due to the storm chasers barbecue I couldn't find anything. By the way we should do like a storm chasers barbecue that sounds kind of fun. I had to admit to myself that I wasn't going to see video of this tornado during this portion of its life cycle. The tornado photo would forever remain an enigma. That is until I received an email from a person by the name of Spoongle Bob. The email stated this Dear Jake Swiggle, that's my real name, I watched your video on the famous tornado photos and decided to do a little more research on the Miami Texas tornado that the twister poster had on the cover. Turns out it took place at Roberts County Texas which I assume is close to Miami Texas. Here is footage another person took. It's very clear and you can see when the tornado picture was taken. Enjoy. I was so excited to get this email and to click that video. I wanted to see it so bad. So the video itself was actually captured by a storm chaser by the name of Alan Gwynn and this was early in his career. So the people who the only people who were chasing this tornado were young storm chasers who I guess weren't invited to the Norman Oklahoma barbecue since they were you know still students or whatever. The reason why I couldn't find this video before was because well first of all he doesn't say Miami and I kept searching Miami and second of all the date in his title is like formatted weird and for some reason it never popped up for me. But this video this video is incredible. It starts off very similar to the OU storm chasers video with a tiny cone slowly descending from the base of the wall cloud. There is one thing that's different though. The sun is behind the tornado which means we're on the right side that the twister movie cover tornado was photo. Wait what? That the twister movie tornado photo was taken. It really is quite a beautiful tornado. One particular part of the video that is absolutely incredible at least to me is this portion right here that shows the entire supercell. You see the sides of the supercell and the small tornado in the center. Absolutely incredible. Mother nature is incredible and this would have been amazing to see in person. So around this portion of the video I was starting to get pretty excited as I could begin to see the tilt and the wall cloud. Unfortunately it started to rain. Alan Gwynn decided to relocate and I was worried I'd miss the iconic twister tornado cover scene because it appeared out of the car window that everything was slowly taking shape and coming together. The lighting started to look right. But thankfully Alan pulled over near a ranch entrance and filmed this clip. There it is people that's the twister tornado. I couldn't believe that there was actual video of it at the same angle as the photo. I was so happy to find this and I'm sure many of you are like why is this a big deal to you? I don't know when you have the movie poster on your wall as a kid and you stare at it and you just you know this was before phones so you had to like look at just the wall sometimes when you were bored and I would do that look at this poster and just like oh crazy tornado and to find a video of it is so satisfying to me and it was so fascinating to look for it. The closest to the twister cover is approximately here where it's slightly curved at the end you can see that a little bit very cool. Alan continues to film the tornado rope out and we can see it's very similar to that of the OU storm chasers video and this part is actually really sweet like the dust falling just down after it ropes out and the dust slowly settles back down to the ground. Definitely some incredible footage of mother nature. Isn't it fascinating that arguably the most viewed tornado of all time perhaps the most famous iconic Hollywood tornado ever was also one of the least chased? It was just a simple F1 tornado out in the middle of West Texas that hardly anyone saw. This is the sort of event that I wish I could witness. It's definitely up there as one of the greatest tornado events of all time at least to me and this in some ways is like the most humble tornado of all time. Not that tornadoes can have humility but to be a rare fluke tornado that somehow made it onto the cover of a Hollywood movie that everyone has seen. I don't know it's just cool to me. Definitely an iconic event in the history of meteorology but with that said thank you so much for watching and be sure to check out the amazing graphic t-shirts and clothing from today's video sponsor Into the AM. You use promo code SWIGGLE to get 10% off sitewide plus they have that huge sale right now but yes thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time.