Synopsis

Tornado Alley is an explosive giant-screen adventure that takes viewers on an epic chase through the "severe weather capital of the world." Narrated by Bill Paxton, the film follows Storm Chasers star Sean Casey and the scientists of VORTEX2, the largest tornado-research project ever assembled, on separate missions to encounter one of Earth’s most awe-inspiring events - the birth of a tornado. Whirling above the human drama are the storms themselves, magnificent forces of nature revealed in breathtaking detail through the magic of the giant screen, making this heart-pounding film one of the most eagerly anticipated IMAX® releases of the decade. Filmed across America’s Plains states where three quarters of the world’s tornadoes occur, Tornado Alley follows veteran storm chasers on two unprecedented missions. Carrying a ninety-two-pound IMAX camera that belonged to his father, filmmaker Sean Casey and his crew race after storms in TIV-2, a seven-ton armored "tornado intercept vehicle" engineered and built by Casey to withstand the impact of the gale force winds at a tornado's core. What is the goal that drives Casey into relentless supercell storms? To navigate the TIV-2 directly into the heart of a tornado and capture its beauty and destructive power on film - at point blank range. Leading researchers Joshua Wurman, Karen Kosiba and Don Burgess, along with the scientists of VORTEX2, are also on a quest to penetrate a tornado’s inner workings. But their methods - and their manpower - are different. The most ambitious scientific mission of its kind, VORTEX2 is comprised of over a hundred severe-weather researchers from all over the world. Their challenge? To coordinate and position their fleet of radar trucks, mobile mesonet vehicles and the most sophisticated weather-measuring instruments ever created, literally surrounding tornadoes and the supercell storms that form them. Like Casey, the VORTEX2 team must weather the challenges of the road and face nature's elemental power on their quest to collect data throughout a tornado’s entire lifecycle. Their hope? To better predict where and when tornadoes will strike, and to provide warnings that give those at risk a few more minutes to protect themselves and their families. Over the course of Tornado Alley, science begins to reveal the unseen architecture of nature’s most elusive weather phenomenon, and viewers, for the first time in film history, are taken straight into the heart of an actual tornado. This unforgettable visual journey tracks the paths of a renegade filmmaker and team of dedicated researchers, two very different kinds of storm chasers whose ultimate goal is nonetheless the same: to unlock the mysteries of Earth’s most violent storms.

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