A Texas expert talks fact, fiction in "Twisters" movie

• The movie stars Daisy Edgar-Jones ("Normal People") and Glen Powell ("Anyone but You").

The big picture: "Twisters" has proven to be a box office hit in its first two weekends.

• And that's on the tail of one of the most prolific tornado seasons of recent years.

Zoom in: Texas A&M University tornado expert Christopher Nowotarski, an associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, shared his insights online about the facts and fiction behind the movie.

State of play: Nowotarski, who considers himself a storm chaser, thought the movie did "a good job at capturing the essence of storm chasing" and said it used real meteorological terms.

• The original movie and social media both led to an increase in amateur storm chasers, he said, and the crowds depicted at small-town gas stations when a storm is brewing are realistic.

Yes, but: The "depiction of what tornadoes can do or what science can realistically achieve are exaggerated, dramatized or physically impossible," Nowotarski wrote.

Case in point: Science doesn't require someone to drive straight into a tornado, and scientific storm chasing is not as dangerous as portrayed on-screen.

• Plus, Nowotarski says a tornado couldn't be destroyed if it sucked up a certain powder — the goal of the fictional scientist in the new movie.

Flashback: The scientists' work in the 1996 movie was "to some degree" inspired by a real-life project called the TOtable Tornado Observatory (TOTO), Nowotarski added, noting their fictional scientific instrument is called "Dorothy."