“Into the Storm” is in theaters, and one might call it the first real theatrical film about storm chasing since “Twister” in 1996. I wouldn’t, however, because the film’s “storm chasing” couldn’t be farther from the real thing. This is disaster porn, plain and simple.

In sensibility, Steven Quale’s film is closer to a TV movie, with a grim main plot (tornadoes terrorize a small town, especially its teenagers, while the incompetent “chasers” try to film and survive them) and one outlandish but funny subplot (YouTube-loving rednecks chase the tornadoes, slapstick-style).

What does “Into the Storm” have going for it? Incredible computer graphics. These are among the best stormy special effects I’ve ever seen. But they are supported by a story and characters that inspire more unintentional laughter than suspense and thrills. Cool tornado sequences do not equate to great drama or exciting action. There’s a lot of drudgery between the tornadoes, and even the deaths are highly predictable.

“Twister” was no masterpiece, but it did have a sense of humor, memorable characters and dialogue, and a compelling story arc. The script in “Into the Storm” lacks those, but it may be remembered (by storm chasers, at least) for its loopy inaccuracies. When the supposedly multi-degreed researcher (Sarah Ann Callies) says the “systems” are too chaotic to track, or when said researcher/forecaster is taken completely by surprise by hail and tornadoes and gets her warnings from television, or when the radar displayed on their wall of monitors doesn’t match the weather, or when the chase team keeps talking about seeing a “vortex,” or when the team just sits around waiting for storms that supposedly are already in progress, you have to wonder what kind of stupid chasers they are. It’s especially disheartening that Callies’ character, the one major female role in the film, is such a dolt. But nobody in this film can be called a genius. With a $50 million budget, could the filmmakers not have taken a storm chaser out to dinner and asked a few questions about how storms and chasing really work?

The chasers drive around in a tank reminiscent of Sean Casey’s Tornado Intercept Vehicle, helmed by a jerk named Pete (Matt Walsh). But like all of the characters, he is barely developed and kind of bland. I can’t blame the actors entirely. They didn’t have much to work with. Perhaps most sympathetic is Richard Armitage as the dad/school official who tries to get everyone to safety. He’s dour but believable.

Credibility in the film is further strained by its halfhearted documentary style. The story is supposedly told through various video camera footage — including excruciatingly long speeches by teens in peril – but not convincingly so.

By the time the “eye of the tornado” appears, some audience giggling is inevitable. I hated to laugh at all of these earnest folks, especially when some of the movie seems inspired by (one might say exploits) the deadly Joplin tornado, but I fear it’s just too silly to take seriously. And it really wants you to take it seriously. If you added some sharks, it would be a different story.

Chris Kridler is a storm chaser who once wrote movie reviews for The Baltimore Sun and has penned her own storm-chasing adventures, the Storm Seekers Series.

Storms in Brevard County, Florida, on August 9 grew strong quickly, forming scalloped shelf clouds and dumping prodigious amounts of rain.

Rain forced me to cancel a portrait shoot, so I dashed across the Indian River Lagoon and shot the storm coming in over Cocoa, Florida, at 5:02 p.m.

I got ahead of the storms by rushing to Merritt Island and shooting back east at Cocoa, then continuing east to Cocoa Beach and ultimately Port Canaveral. 

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One of the reasons I moved to Florida in 1999 was to enjoy the lightning storms. I was living in the mid-Atlantic and had gotten into chasing storms in Tornado Alley two years earlier. I looked into moving to Oklahoma, but career and geography conspired to bring me to Florida. The one thing I didn’t realize was that so few of the lightning storms in the Sunshine State are at night. Most happen during the day. And getting to a storm an hour away in Florida is not nearly as easy as getting to one in Tornado Alley. Why? It’s not just because of the traffic and road network. It’s because Florida storms tend to be short-lived; by the time you hit the road to catch that storm 45 miles away, it’s faded to a misty memory.

This past week was par for the course – and the one night a little lightning hung on after dark on the east coast, where I live, I didn’t get to it until it was nearly gone. But I’ve had a crazy smorgasbord of storms upon which to feast, yielding a nice photo or two almost every day. Florida has amazing striated shelf clouds, formed by cool air pushing out from thunderstorms. And boundary collisions tend to cause quick funnels and tornadoes; I was at a small get-together at a friend’s house when a funnel cloud (not a tornado, because it didn’t connect with the ground, at least that we saw) formed beyond their neighbors’ houses. My camera got soaking wet as I ran out in the rain in my bathing suit to try to shoot photos. What a week!

Meanwhile, I’ve been working late on revisions and editing of “Zap Bang,” the final novel in the Storm Seekers trilogy. I’m thrilled to be wrapping up the story and heartbroken to be leaving these characters. It’s coming very soon!

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A line of storms formed in east-central Florida on July 14, pushing out an outflow boundary that created a beautiful striated shelf cloud.

I shot photos of it over Cocoa Village, in downtown Cocoa, and then raced east to catch it again at the Cocoa Beach Pier.

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Nature paralleled the unnatural on Wednesday, July 9, 2014, when a beautiful striated shelf cloud moved over Cocoa, Florida, the Indian River Lagoon and the bridge over the S.R. 520 Causeway. It originated from a barely-moving severe storm farther west that sent out an outflow boundary. The shelf cloud almost mirrored the curve of the bridge as it went overhead.  This was a “gentle(wo)man’s chase,” just a few miles from home, as I followed the slow-moving line of severe storms.

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I had a chance to see Cocoa, Florida’s July 4th fireworks from a height on Friday and snapped several photos. They were taken looking toward the S.R. 520 bridge over the Indian River Lagoon. Here are a few of the more interesting explosions. Happy summer!

Off and on for a few years, I’ve been trying to perfect a time-lapse of a night-blooming cereus flowering, but it’s a challenge, because each bloom flowers for only one night. Each time I’ve used a different camera and different lighting. I’ve blown out the image with too much light, so this year I used a smaller light. But I had to use a wide-angle waterproof camera because it was raining in our part of central Florida, so sacrifices were made in terms of quality and zoom. You can see the flowers buffeted by the wind as a shower whisks through.

Still, it’s always fascinating to see these beautiful flowers unfold for their one-night-a-year show. Click the gear symbol in the lower left after you hit play and choose 720HD for best quality.

On June 5, 2014, I started my day in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and decided to target southeast Colorado. This would be my last day of chasing in Tornado Alley for this season.

I made a stop in Limon, running into Charles Edwards of Cloud 9 Tours, and evaluated data before committing to the target. The first storm I chased was near the southernmost town in Colorado, Branson.

The severe storms led me into the dramatic topography of northeastern New Mexico and then the Texas Panhandle, when lightning lured me to pause during my all-night drive, as I was starting my trip home to the east coast.

I was especially delighted to get shots of a storm looming over the Route 66 landmark U Drop Inn in Shamrock, Texas. The beautiful wee-hours storms were a satisfying way to end a trip of meager setups and an insane amount of driving.

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On June 1, 2014, I met up with fellow chasers Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland, Anemometer Steve Barabas, and The Weather Network’s Mark Robinson, Jaclyn Whittal and Michel Millaire.

We faced a bunch of ongoing convection, including a morning storm over Sidney, Nebraska, where we’d spent the night, and knew the forecast would be messy. We chased storms in northwest Kansas, but they had trouble remaining isolated and maintaining their strength.

Still, the skies were sometimes spectacular, and I got a few photos that made me happy.

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On May 26, 2014, Peggy Willenberg and I hopped east to Stanton, Texas, from our starting point in Midland to keep an eye on developing storms.

We ran into friends there, including Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland, Robert Balogh, John Mann, Anemometer Steve Barabas, and The Weather Network’s Mark Robinson, Jaclyn Whittal and Michel Millaire, whom we met on and off all day.

What a swoosh in this storm!

We targeted a storm to the northwest and chased it for a while, then switched to a storm developing behind it. It was a day of stunning structure and rotating features, some of them dusty, and while many of these spinups were reported as tornadoes, we didn’t see any tornado I’d hang on the wall of fame.

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