Does “Dorothy” or something like it (as seen in “Twister”) actually exist?
In the movie “Twister,” the chasers are trying to deploy something called “Dorothy” that consists of a large number of instrument packages inside plastic “bubbles” that will send data about the tornado back to the chasers. The container holding these sensors looks to be modeled after a real instrument package called “TOTO” (for TOtable Tornado Observatory) that was developed by Dr. Al Bedard of ERL in Boulder. The idea was for a chaser to put TOTO down in the path of a tornado so that data from the passage of the tornado would be recorded on magnetic tape. TOTO was roughly the size of a 55 gallon oil drum and was designed to stay put (hopefully) during the passage of a tornado. For a number of years, it was carried about during storm chases by Prof. Howard Bluestein of the School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma. Then, TOTO was given to NSSL to attempt deployment. All these efforts were essentially unsuccessful because it’s difficult to put objects in the path of a tornado! Only
