A Town of 300 People Is Home to the One and Only 'Twister' Museum
After filming wrapped in 1995, Warner Bros. told the Wakita, Oklahoma, to expect a few visitors. They haven’t stopped showing up yet.
John Wetter refers to himself as part of “the Twister generation.”
He’s referring, of course, to the 1996 film that exposed millions of Americans to the thrill—and the art—of storm chasing. The blockbuster follows an underfunded storm chasing team led by Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) and her soon-to-be ex Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) as they pursue severe weather on the Great Plains. Backed by a remarkable roster of supporting actors—including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cary Elwes, and Alan Ruck—the team goes wherever the weather takes them, driven by the desire for scientific discovery.
Wetter began chasing storms in 1997, and as the president of the Spotter Network, a non-profit that coordinates data from live chases, he tends to go wherever the weather takes him. But like many other Twister fans, he sometimes heads toward the tiny Oklahoma town of Wakita—population 307. The farming community is an hour and a half from the nearest airport and 40 minutes west of the nearest interstate, but about 1,000 people each year take the detour in tribute to their favorite ‘90s movie. Wetter, who lives in suburban Minneapolis, calls visiting Twister The Movie Museum—located in the town where the movie was filmed—a “bucket list item” for folks like him.
After filming wrapped in 1995, production designer Joseph C. Nemec III told the small community to expect a few visits from fans. That’s when Linda Wade, who was then president of the local garden club, sprung into action. “We thought visitors might be a little bit disappointed if they drove all this way and all they could see would be a water tower,” Wade says.
To remedy this, her club developed a walking tour that stopped at different filming sites, the most famous being the lot that was once home to character Aunt Meg’s house. With the help of Nemec, they put together a small museum in the building used for the studio’s location offices. It showcased debris from the sets and props from the film, including one of the measurement devices—aptly named Dorothy—used by chasers in the film. It also hosted a collection of early promotional materials and an exhibit of behind-the-scenes photos that showed how the studio prepped Wakita for filming the summer of 1995.
The museum came together quickly and opened before the film was released. “They left in August and we opened in September,” Wade says, adding that admission has been free since day one. The first wave of visitors mostly consisted of locals who were curious to learn about the filming process. But interest grew when the film hit theaters in May 1996, and thousands of annual visitors flocked to Wakita in the first few years. (Several iconic movies came out the same year as Twister, including Independence Day, Space Jam, Scream, and Fargo. But none of them seems to have developed a similar fandom.)
Visitors came for birthdays, anniversaries, and honeymoons—but also as part of storm-chasing tours. Companies like Storm Chasing Adventure Tours, based out of Wichita, Kansas, also popped up to ride the wave of the movie’s success. More tour companies followed suit in the following years, including Oklahoma-based Extreme Tornado Tours, founded by meteorologist Reed Timmer of the reality show Storm Chasers. These tours cater to weather tourists who pay a few thousand dollars to join experienced chasers in hopes of seeing a tornado. But when the weather isn’t inclement enough to warrant a chase, many of these tours fill the down time with other activities—including trips to the museum. “It’s been good for the economy,” says Town Clerk Kathy Morrison of the production that came to Wakita more than 20 years ago. “It brings a lot of visitors to town still after all these years.”
She’s right that interest hasn’t faded in the ensuing decades. Wade says that over the past few weeks, she’s had international visitors from France, the Netherlands, the UK, and Pakistan—some of whom are in the area hoping to spot a tornado. But for others, the museum is a worthy stop in and of itself, even though Wakita itself has minimal overnight amenities for visitors. Besides the Twister Cafe (no relation to the museum), which serves burgers and breakfast, there’s also a small grocery store and a couple of Airbnbs. Occasionally, cast members from the film stop by for a dose of nostalgia, too.
Wendle Josepher, who plays the apprentice storm chaser Haynes in Twister, was surprised by Wade’s invitation to come to Wakita for the movie’s 25th anniversary. But when Josepher finally made it to Wakita—first in 2021, then again in 2022 —she was blown away by that same sense of camaraderie. “Their town is so happy with the Twister museum,” Josepher says.
For these visits, she was joined by co-star Sean Whalen to sign autographs for fans. “I was in tears the whole first time because so many people came to the table and said, ‘You guys inspired me to study the weather,’” Josepher says. Kids made her presents, families asked her to pray with them, and many people—women in particular—thanked her for introducing them to meteorology.
Meanwhile, Wade looks forward to welcoming visitors for their annual celebration in September, which will include a storm-chaser car show with vehicles from the movie. Although she hopes to retire someday, she expects this year’s event to see a surge of interest due to the upcoming sequel Twisters, which is set to hit theaters this July.
A lot has changed since the original film came out, both in terms of the museum and in the world of storm spotting. The museum’s core artifacts have remained the same, but Wade will occasionally receive donations from collectors—including a SEGA Twister pinball machine that was donated by Bill Paxton before his unexpected passing in 2017, and a tornado simulator booth similar to those set to be installed in some movie theaters this summer as promotion for Twisters. Plus, these days, chasing is much more accessible, thanks to 5G networks and apps like RadarScope. Although tornados may have been something to fear back in the quaint old times of 1996, some newer chasers will even put themselves in the path of a weak tornado in order to create content.
“It’s more like an X-Games type of a thing than it is about the love of nature and the power of the atmosphere,” Wetter says.
Meanwhile, movie fandom isn’t quite the same as it used to be, either. The original Twister banked almost $500 million worldwide—a number borderline unfathomable for anything other than superhero movies these days. Given the cinematic climate, it’s unclear whether any sequel could potentially drum up the quasi-religious fantasticism that its predecessor inspired. (When Bill Paxton died, Wetter organized a tribute by having spotters spell out Paxton’s initials on the Spotter Network GPS.)
For this part, Wetter, who plans to go see Twisters on its opening night, is “guardedly optimistic.” It’s not hard to imagine why, given the original film played such a big part in his life. He watches it about a dozen times a year, he says. While he doesn’t expect the sequel to live up to that standard, he’s willing to give it a chance. “That enduring quality is still Twister,” Wetter says. “That's what people identify with.” No matter what the reception to the sequel ends up being, the cult classic will continue to bring fans back to Wakita—the original eye of the storm.