The Tornados Portrayed in The Day After Tomorrow

By Kaitlin Kelsch
In 2004, Director Roland Emmerichs film The Day After Tomorrow premiered. The plot of the
film, in short, revolves around Paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), who, having been separated
from his son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), in the wake of devastating disasters caused by global climate
change, decides to trek across the now-frozen tundra of the United States to rescue his son from the
bleak conditions of New York City.
While many disasters both awe-inspiring and terrifying happen throughout the course of the
movie, such as 100 foot tidal waves and -150 degree ice storms, one of the scenes I find rather
fascinating is the scene where L.A is completely and utterly devastated by multiple EF5 tornados
occurring simultaneously. While we all know that tornados are terrible disasters that leave ruin
wherever they go, the tornados depicted in the film are, among other things, able to slice through
skyscrapers, pick up heavy buses with ease, and merge together into multiple colossal super tornados.
It doesnt take much to imagine the sheer annihilation and it is this event that motivates the FAA to
suspend all air traffic in the United States, thus separating Jack from Sam.
But just how much of the movie is true to life and how much is just Hollywood glitz and glam?
To help separate the truth from the fallacies, this will require some in-depth thinking. Can an amazing
storm like this really occur under todays conditions? And even if it takes global climate change to
produce such a ferocious storm, should The Day After Tomorrow be treated as moral about the
inadvertent damage humans can do to the world or just another clich disaster movie?
First of all, how likely is it that multiple F5 tornados can occur at once? To answer this, you need
to know the nature of a supercell storm. A Supercell storm has a cyclonically rotating vortex (AMS
Glossary) in its center called a mesocyclone (AMS Glossary) and can often be thought of as rotating
thunderstorms. The conditions for F5 tornados, extreme values of instability, jet-stream level winds,

and low-level wind shear (The Weather Channel), are so rare that only 1 tornado out of an average of
1,200 a year can be classified as an F5 (The Weather Channel) (NSSL). [The conditions simply] dont
combine that often to produce supercells capable of spawning F5 tornados (The Weather Channel)
and thus, the odds that that many F5 tornados can occur in the same place all at once are extremely
low.
Second of all, can tornados really slice through skyscrapers like they do in the movie? The
simple answer is that they are just not that fast. At the most, the average ground speed of a tornado
can reach up to 70 miles an hour and the cyclonic winds within the tornado can only reach up to 250
miles per hour (NOAA Watch). Primarily, the most damage that a skyscraper would incur from a big
tornado would most likely be damage to the glass windows and interior walls, such as the case of the
Bank One Tower in Fort Worth, Texas, when it was hit by a tornado in 2000 (New York Times). Thus, the
damage to the skyscrapers in the movie is greatly exaggerated.
Third of all, will climate change have some kind of an effect on tornados that will make them
larger and bigger? According to climate scientist Kevin Trenbert, as reported by Scientific American, the
amount of warm and moist air introduced into the atmosphere from gas emissions will create unstable
air, thus increasing the chance that tornados of bigger intensity will form. So yes, climate change will
affect the frequency and intensity of tornados; however, it is logically absurd to think that the tornados
intensity will escalate that fast, especially since a study from Carnegie University finds that the last
stages of climate change will most likely happen on a gradual scale.
However, it is interesting to note that the movie did get a few things right. For example,
tornados have been known to occur in many parts of the world (NSSL), not just in the Midwestern
United States. Thus, while some areas are more likely than others, tornados can occur anyplace and
anytime, including Los Angeles. Also, while rare, tornados can indeed merge together, usually because

a larger and stronger tornado simply draws in and absorbs the lesser circulation [and] then keeps on
going (Online Tornado FAQ).
These pieces of evidence, as well as many others not mentioned in the context of this essay,
prove that a massive disaster exactly like the disaster portrayed in the film is not likely, whether climate
change occurs or not. However, while the portrayal of the tornados in the film may not be based on
fact, the film still serves many important purposes. For one, the film raises the publics consciousness
about tornados and other disasters and encourages people to be prepared in the event of an
emergency. It also raises awareness about the amount of damage to the environment humans can
cause. It may have been many times and in many ways, but earth really is the only home that we have;
if we dont take care of it, our resources will replenish but it wont be able to support us as comfortably
as it does now.

Finally, sometimes it is necessary to suspend your disbelief in order to enjoy the film.

Where would the fun in life be if humans couldnt think so imaginatively?

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