Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Twisters: Natures Deadly Force is an hour long program focused on tornadoes, storm chasers and assorted historical events mostly around Oklahoma. It was produced in tandem with KOTV in Tulsa, Jeff Piotrowski and others during a time when public interest in tornado videos surged around and after the release of the 1996 film, Twister. This was a mass marketed VHS home video available in the United States through the late 1990's.
Enjoy!
Twisters: Natures Deadly Force is an hour long program focused on tornadoes, storm chasers and assorted historical events mostly around Oklahoma. It was produced in tandem with KOTV in Tulsa, Jeff Piotrowski and others during a time when public interest in tornado videos surged around and after the release of the 1996 film, Twister. This was a mass marketed VHS home video available in the United States through the late 1990's.
Enjoy!
![Neil Ward, Interview and Tornado Laboratory Model, 1964
Neil Ward was a pioneering research scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory [NSSL] from the start of the ESSA [later NOAA] funded organization in 1964 onward until his death in 1972.
Along with building and developing the first physical laboratory model in his garage, and later updating a new version at NSSL that imitated actual tornado features later observed in field observations, Ward lead the way in scientific based storm chasing and documentation, the first to successfully locate and film a motion picture of a tornado on a storm chase with radar report radio relay assistance from the Oklahoma Highway Patrol on May 4, 1961.
Purdue University later refined the Ward model, which allowed for identification and investigation of the parameters that govern various types of vortex formation and behavior. [Grazulis, The Tornado Project].
This interview was recorded and distributed by a now defunct New York City television firm that produced educational films. The later tornado model films were taken by Ward himself. The entire sequence was provided by Dr. Ward to The Tornado Project for use in the Tom and Doris Grazulis produced educational film Approaching the Unapproachable in 1972 and later the Tornado Video Classics videotape series in 1992.
Additional information via StormTrack magazine: https://stormtrack.org/library/people/ward.htm
Film © the National Severe Storms Laboratory and the archive of Neil Ward, courtesy of The Tornado Project. Neil Ward, Interview and Tornado Laboratory Model, 1964](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sLYJzfC-S_4/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Gotebo Fooler! Kiowa Co. Oklahoma Supercell Chase Day, June 2, 1985
June 2, 1985 was a big high risk severe weather day in the Central Plains and specifically in Oklahoma. Storm chasers Jim Leonard and Chuck Robertson teamed up and ventured southwest towards Kiowa County near Hobart. They encountered a tornado warned supercell thunderstorm with a reported tornado on the ground by local weather spotters east of the small crossroads community of Gotebo, Oklahoma. Upon driving east they soon realized the tornado was actually smoke from a fire caused by lightning striking an oil derrick pump with smoke that was being ingested into the updraft base.
At the same time from a different angle, the TOTO [Totable Tornado Observatory] crew from the National Severe Storms Laboratory observed the same sight. Documentary filmmakers Don Lenzer and Richard Lerner, whom were riding along, captured the same sight featured in this video along with Dr. Lou Wickers mistaken comment of tornado, tornado, I think we have a tornado featured prominently in the 1985 PBS NOVA Tornado! documentary. This specific event, of which also was mistaken by Jim Leonard and Chuck Robertson within this video, eventually became known around the Norman meteorology circuit as The Gotebo Fooler. Its a great example of how experienced storm chasers and meteorologists can be had by nature.
The 1985 PBS NOVA Tornado original broadcast documentary can be viewed here in full: https://youtu.be/0sBpR7LlmLU
Later that same day, Jim Leonard and Chuck Robertson recorded a spectacular hail and lightning event with the high precipitation supercell that continued east. That video became one of the most utilized storm chase videos in the mid-1980s, as there were very few high quality [videotapes] around at that point. The hail and lightning encounter, which significantly damaged Jims vehicle, is probably one of the better known sequences to many long time severe weather video viewers. Many watching this will likely remember it from the Tornado Video Classics video series or from broadcast television versions through the late 1990s.
This is most of the raw video from June 2, 1985, provided by Jim Leonard and Chuck Robertson. Jim Leonard passed away on November 3, 2014.
Videography by Jim Leonard, © 1985, All Rights Reserved. This video along with many other photographs, films and videotapes provided from Jim Leonard over the years are physically preserved for posterity at the Southwest Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The Gotebo Fooler! Kiowa Co. Oklahoma Supercell Chase Day, June 2, 1985](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/slmP09rKPLo/mqdefault.jpg)

![Tornado! 1956 Restored 16mm Film Print
The first public awareness film produced with the limited motion picture films available of tornadoes was released in 1956 by the forerunner to the National Weather Service known as the United States Weather Bureau. The film was widely used and shown at Civil Defense meetings, academic and church groups throughout the US until it was eventually replaced with an updated color version in 1967.
Several points of bad advice made the rounds in Tornado [1956] including to open windows and doors to equalize air pressure and to shelter in the southwest corner of a home. Both of these theories were proven false, fatal or both, yet endured in the public mindset well into the 1980s.
This is a restored 16mm film print that was originally provided to me by the late Dr. Charles Doswell III, professionally scanned and restored by the Chicago Film Archives in 2023 and now available again here on Ancient Air Theatre.
The 1970 update to TORNADO! produced in 1967: https://youtu.be/ZDn5G5ZTbR4?si=dWhYrEvuYHDC2z7y Tornado! 1956 Restored 16mm Film Print](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/t0LgQoO9s7o/mqdefault.jpg)




![May 13, 1980 Kalamazoo, MI Evening Tornado Newscast | WKZO TV 3
On Tuesday, May 13, 1980 a destructive tornado swirled through the city of Kalamazoo. Three hours after the fact, this special report on WKZO Channel 3 [now WWMT] was broadcast at 7-7:30 p.m. Then Kalamazoo mayor Ed Annen Jr. made an on set appearance to address the city and surrounding municipalities at the top of the newscast, followed up with first hand reports from reporters and eyewitnesses. This was the first broadcast of the now fairly well known videotape recorded by Ted Ruble at The Sound Room in downtown at the corner of West Main and Westnedge. It was rare at the time to have two different perspectives of a tornado on videotape and WKZO was the first station in the nation to make that happen.
Enjoy this visual blast from Kalamazoos local television past!
Additional information on the May 13, 1980 tornadoes: https://www.1980kalamazootornado.org/ May 13, 1980 Kalamazoo, MI Evening Tornado Newscast | WKZO TV 3](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ucgqBufl0k4/mqdefault.jpg)

![Eye On The Sky | 1996 WOOD TV8 NBC Grand Rapids, MI
This is a West Michigan severe weather special produced by the weather and production crew at WOOD TV8 Grand Rapids that originally aired in March 1996. Please excuse the videotape audio distortions!
I recorded this broadcast the evening it aired as a high schooler/soon to be meteorology geography WMU student and its quite interesting to see how much has shifted in weather broadcasting from then until now [2025]. Live television affiliate radar is no longer a thing and so much has evolved.
Enjoy this moment in West Michigan weather history! Eye On The Sky | 1996 WOOD TV8 NBC Grand Rapids, MI](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vsV2ZVAE4f4/mqdefault.jpg)