Nova

Hunt For The Supertwister

A powerful tornado is a terrifying phenomenon that continues to defy decades of scientific efforts to predict it. During one of the worst tornado seasons on record, a NOVA camera team chased across the Midwest, capturing hair-raising footage of highly destructive twisters in action. But this is much more than just another "extreme weather" show, focusing on the efforts of two scientists at the University of Oklahoma to develop radically different approaches to forecasting twisters: one relies on "virtual tornados" created inside supercomputers, while the other involves hunting down real-life storms to collect data firsthand (the method that inspired the movie Twister). With jaw-dropping 3-D graphics generated by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, "Hunt for the Supertwister" features spectacular footage of these terrifying twisters and gives viewers a front-row seat to the risky and thrilling art of storm chasing.