Movies about Weather manipulation
As you undoubtedly already know by now (because you have been counting down the days!), today is the day Gerard Butler’s Geostorm finally hits theaters. The blockbuster-to-be is about weather satellites – not ones to measure weather, but ones that control it – that are turned against us and used to create massive storms that wreak havoc on humanity until Butler decides it’s time to start fighting back. It feels like we’ve been waiting forever for the guaranteed goofy joy that is Geostorm, and in celebration of its much-anticipated arrival we’ve decided to take a look at other movies where the weather is not only dangerous. but also ridiculous.
To be clear, this isn’t a ranking of weather-related disaster movies. (If it was, though, at least we’d all agree Nemožné would nab the top spot.) Instead, it’s a look at some of the more memorable ways in which weather has tried to kill us on the big screen – and usually succeeded.
Keep reading for a look at some of the craziest ways weather has tried to kill people in the movies.
Pozítří (2004)
How does the weather kill? Hail storms, tornadoes, and flash freezes that can only be outrun by academic decathletes.
Any list featuring weather-related disaster movies is legally obligated to include at least one Roland Emmerich film, and while 2009’s 2012 would have worked well enough, this nod to climate change and global warming seems far more relevant. Its basis in real-world science concerns doesn’t make it any more realistic, of course, but amid its numerous scenes of inclement weather wiping out mankind it’s the «flash freeze» sequence that earns it a spot here. See, a sub-arctic cold front is whipping across the northern hemisphere, and while most people are caught off guard and frozen on the spot a young-ish Jake Gyllenhaal is able to literally outrun it on foot. This may be the most realistic part of the movie.
The Devil’s Rain (1975)
How does the weather kill? Acid rain, but luckily it only melts Satanists.
I should first apologize to our Satanist readers, as it would not be so lucky for you. Site analytics show only 4% of our visitors are Satanists, but you still matter to us. Anyway. You could argue that the cult at the center of this film are the bigger threat, but it’s the rain that claims the highest body count. Call it judgement from above or a simple liquid cleansing, but the rain kills because the devilish cult’s members have willfully given their souls over to Ernest Borgnine of all people. Bad move. Turns out there’s a reason the King James bible refers to human souls as «the Turtle Wax of illusory concoctions.» That’s right, they deflect rain, and without them human flesh simply melts into mush when wet.
Mlha (1980)
How does the weather kill? Fog. Well, fog loaded with ghostly, sword-wielding pirates suffering from pink eye and a desire to reclaim what’s rightfully theirs.
Fog isn’t typically a killer in movies outside of car crashes and movies like Mlha, where fog appears under an alias, but John Carpenter finds menace in its wispy coils and billowing pillows of death. It really shouldn’t be as unnerving as it is throughout the film, and while the scene where the glowing fog makes its move on little Andy Wayne is creepy, the one following with his mother (Adrienne Barbeau) is an all-timer. Carpenter’s fourth feature may not be as beloved as I personally think it should be, but there’s no denying that it features the most exciting portrayal of meteorological reporting captured onscreen since that weatherman in New Zealand spotted a penis-shaped waterspout.
Hard Rain (1998)
How does the weather kill? It’s a convoluted path, but basically (hard) rain leads to flooding which then leads obviously to murderous armored-car robbers on jet skis. Huh, maybe it’s not that convoluted.
If you haven’t seen this late 90s gem I have to question your commitment to Christian Slater’s filmography. Next you’re going to tell me you haven’t seen Kuffs or Zářící kostka either. It’s essentially a straightforward attempted robbery flick with bad guys stymied by an honorable good guy, but it’s made into something pretty darn special by one simple plot gimmick – almost the entirety of the movie takes place in five feet of water. The robbers are technically the ones doing most of the killing, but it’s the weather that creates the environment and makes it all possible. The rain keeps falling through much of the film, and while it doesn’t quite reach biblical proportions, it dělá star Morgan Freeman as the main baddie, which is almost the same thing.
Jack Frost (1997)
How does the weather kill? Snow gets sticky with a serial killer’s genetic material and takes on the shape of a murderous snowman.
If you’re starting to doubt your memories of having seen a movie called Jack Frost and thinking it was a sweet tale about a father and his son, well, you’re not crazy. This is a different Jack Frost, and instead of featuring Michael Keaton hugging his kid it stars American Pie‘s Shannon Elizabeth «hugging» a snowman in the bath tub. Snow kills plenty of people in movies, but this is a rare example of it doing so in such an actively sadistic way. The white, powdery, crystallized condensation is soon stained red as the snowman slaughters, strangles, and drives over the people in his slowly melting path.
Noe (2014)
How does the weather kill? Harder rain.
You really can’t beat the Old Testament when it comes to tales of human carnage both big and small, and while the New Testament comes close with its Book of Revelation, it’s got nothing on the story of the great flood in the Book of Genesis. It’s been the subject of many films before, but Darren Aronofsky’s big CG-filled spectacle captures the event in all its epic, ridiculous glory. Animals come crawling, walking, and slithering two by two, and one big battle later, the rain starts. It kills every biological creature on Earth outside of Noah’s family, his copulation collection, and sea life, which was presumably exempt from God’s wrath because not even He can stay angry with a fish.
Sharknado (2013)
How does the weather kill? Žraloci.
Look, I could sit here and pretend I’ve seen this Syfy channel franchise-starter, but I care too much to serve you lies. I have seen the trailer, though, which in addition to being a big reason why I’ll never watch the film itself, also reveals the factor that lands it on this list. There’s a hurricane heading towards Los Angeles, it makes landfall after scooping up sharks from the ocean. and then it proceeds to launch them at people via malicious tornadoes. It’s not covered in the trailer, but I’m sure the film explains how the sharks are breathing in the open air. Obviously it’s silly and filled with really (intentionally) rough CG work, but if nothing else the filmmakers deserve credit for their utterly bonkers premise (and scorn for milking it through four sequels so far).
Snow Piercer (2013)
How does the weather kill? Climate change freezes the earth leading to mass extinctions and an acquired taste for baby flesh.
Bong Joon-ho’s dystopian sci-fi action/comedy(?) acknowledges global warming as the initial, very serious threat, but he takes it a step further by having mankind’s attempt at an easy fix solution actually worsen the situation instead. Our hubris creates the deadly weather, and the survivors’ shift to the train of the title sees an inhospitable outside lead to murder, savagery, and life-ending dietary restrictions on-board. People will do unimaginable things to survive, and after killing billions, the pressure of Earth’s new weather reality proceeds to chip away at the very little that remains of our humanity. So yeah, in addition to being the deadliest weather event on this list, it’s also the most demoralizing.
Bouře století (1999)
How does the weather kill? A fierce winter storm traps an island community with a deadly stranger who promises to go away if they give him what he wants.
This miniseries is a somewhat hidden gem among Stephen King’s 70-plus movies/miniseries, and while that’s most likely due to it being an original production – there’s no source novel or story – I can’t help but think it’s also because it stars one of the guys from NBC’s Křídla. (Vidět Zářící miniseries as more evidence for this theory.) Regardless, the weather at work here seals off an entire island community, kills a few people, and exists strictly as shelter for the mysterious newcomer who’s in no hurry to say what exactly it is he wants in exchange for leaving. It’s maybe more harrowing and heavy than ridiculous, but I’ll take any chance to call attention to this one.
Twister (1996)
How does the weather kill? Krávy.
Just as I wouldn’t lie to you about not having seen Sharknado, I’m also telling the truth when I say I’ve totally seen Motovidlo. That’s how I know it features a similar plot involving tornadoes that sweep up carnivorous cows and toss them at unsuspecting storm chasers, farmers, and farm animals alike. I don’t remember if Bill Paxton uses a chainsaw against the bovine threat, but I do recall Helen Hunt being mad about ewe.
The zaniest sci-fi movie on Netflix reveals a real way to manipulate the weather
Can you really control the weather? Here’s what an expert has to say.
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Animation
Sometimes, you come across a movie with a premise so outlandish that you can hardly believe it contains a shred of truth.
One such movie is the 2009 surprising box office hit, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, now streaming on Netflix. The animated sci-fi movie deals with the tinkering exploits of inventor Flint Lockwood, whose machine to turn food into water begins raining hamburgers — and yes, meatballs — from clouds in the sky.
Some sci-fi premises present a thin veneer of plausibility, but this one, based on a popular children’s book, does not: hamburgers falling from the sky are not realistic (and they probably wouldn’t be very tasty). But as it turns out, there is a real scientific concept buried deep in the clouds of this movie: weather modification, also known as cloud seeding. Yes, that’s right: humans can actually modify the weather — it’s just in very different ways from the movie’s protagonist.
Obrácený speaks with Robert (Bob) Rauber, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, to explain the wild real-life meteorological science implicitly raised in the kooky animated sci-fi flick. Sadly, no amount of scientific innovation will make food fall from the sky — probably.
“If we’re out there and I see meatballs coming by, I’ll let you know,” Rauber jokingly tells Obrácený.
Reel Science je Obrácený série, která odhaluje skutečnou (a falešnou) vědu za vašimi oblíbenými filmy a TV.
Can you really control the weather?
In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Flint Lockwood makes meatballs rain down from cloudy skies. In real life, scientists are using weather modification technology to increase rain and snowfall.
Obrázky Columbia/Sony Pictures
The answer to this question falls somewhere between a yes and a no.
“Well, the first question I would ask is, what do you mean by control over the weather?” Rauber says.
We can modify the weather — but control it? Probably not. Scientists aren’t Zeus — they can’t make thunderbolts fly from the heavens or summon hurricanes.
“To me, controlling the weather means I can make it rain where I want, I can make it snow where I want, and I can stop things from happening somewhere where I want,” Rauber says. That’s not possible. But weather změna — otherwise known as cloud seeding — is possible in specific circumstances. In Zataženo, občas trakaře, Flint can’t create clouds, but if there are clouds in the sky, he can use them to change the weather — well, generate “food weather.”
Similarly, if there are clouds in the sky, real-life scientists can manipulate their properties to increase precipitation like rainfall or snow. This is nothing new — scientists have been trying out cloud seeding in various forms since the 1940s and going into the Cold War. It’s only in recent years that the technology has gotten good enough that we’ve been able to accurately measure the results of cloud seeding programs, according to Rauber.
But what, exactly, is weather modification or cloud seeding? Here’s Rauber’s definition:
Weather modification is the introduction of some sort of material — typically either silver iodide tiny little salt particles — into a cloud to attempt to change the amount of precipitation coming out of the cloud, or characteristics of that precipitation, such as changing the size of hail.
Let’s unpack how cloud seeding works in the next section.
How does cloud seeding work?
A cloud seeding operation to increase rainfall takes place as an airplane flies through the skies of Thailand.
Cloud seeding or weather modification is infinitely more sophisticated than Flint’s food weather machine that converts water to meals in Zataženo, občas trakaře, but there is a similar conceit in both cases: sending a device into the skies that alters the properties of precipitation from those clouds.
Cloud seeding typically involves injecting silver iodide or salt particles into a cloud using airplanes, but both methods work differently.
The first method using salt particles increases precipitation from clouds, and these efforts to increase rainfall have primarily occurred in the tropics, particularly in China and Southeast Asia. This kind of cloud seeding involves warmer clouds, where water drops collide and produce bigger droplets. These water droplets coalesce and form bigger droplets, which then fall from the clouds as raindrops. When scientists disperse salt particles, the clouds can form bigger droplets that coalesce more readily, leading to heavier and faster rainfall.
But Rauber doesn’t think this type of cloud seeding is especially helpful because it’s difficult to collect this increased rain in a way that’s useful to humans.
“The big issue with that type of seeding is you might be able to make the cloud rain more, but you know, the rain that lands on the ground is going to evaporate. So how do you collect it?” Rauber asks.
The second type of cloud seeding involves injecting silver iodide into clouds, typically over mountainous areas containing snow, and this is where Rauber’s research on weather modification comes into play. To understand this type of cloud seeding, you need to know two things.
First: You probably learned that liquid water freezes at 32 Fahrenheit or 0 Celsius, but that’s not entirely true.
“Water will freeze at that temperature if it contains tiny little particles that are not water — that act as little seeds on which the ice can grow,” Rauber says.
Water lacking these particles can freeze at lower temperatures — as low as minus 40 Fahrenheit — and is known as supercooled water.
Second: water particles in clouds grow exceptionally slowly and are more likely ne to turn into raindrops that fall from the sky as precipitation. So, scientists use the silver iodide method of cloud seeding to make it more likely for these water particles to fall from the sky, specifically as snow in the mountains over the western U.S. If you add extra snow over a greater number of storms, you can build the snowpack higher than it naturally would be.
“Basically, what we’re doing in cloud seeding is we’re converting the supercooled water to ice far enough upstream in the mountain that the ice particles can grow and fall on them out in the snow,” Rauber explains.
Can we control the weather to save us from climate change?
A gauge measures water levels on the Rio Nambe amid extreme drought conditions in the area on June 3, 2022, near Nambe, New Mexico. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 90 percent of New Mexico is experiencing extreme drought conditions amid a climate-change fueled megadrought in the Southwestern United States.
Climate change is causing a historically massive megadrought in the western United States. With landscapes starved of water, can scientists use cloud seeding to save people in these areas from drought?
“The answer is no,” Rauber says bluntly.
Basically, cloud seeding only works if there are, well, clouds. We can’t make clouds appear out of thin air. No clouds mean no possibility of rain — either naturally or via cloud seeding.
But Rauber says there is one way we can use cloud seeding to help adapt to climate change. Warming temperatures mean there’s less snowpack available in mountain ranges like the Sierra Nevadas, the source of most Californians’ drinking water. One recent study even suggests that the Sierra Nevada snowpack will disappear in the next quarter-century.
Cloud seeding could help increase that snowpack, therefore providing more drinking water during times of drought to the western U.S.
“The snowpack is a natural reservoir,” Rauber says, adding “the idea with cloud seeding in the mountains in the wintertime is to try to build that snowpack.”
Real-life weather modification ultimately deals with far more serious issues than Zataženo, občas trakaře, but just as Flint Lockwood learns in the movie, there are limits to how much humans can control the weather in real life, too.
“Nature is so much more powerful and stronger than anything a single human or a group of humans can do,” Rauber says.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is now streaming on Netflix.
The 10 greatest weather movies, ranked by awesomeness
Today was The Oscars, so in the spirit of the movies, here they are. The greatest weather movies we can think of — some so bad they’re good, some that really are exceptionally good.
10. Geostorm (2017)
So bad it’s good. Actually no, it’s really not at all good. But with a plot based around climate-controlling satellites attacking the earth, it’s so utterly ridiculous, and so filled with crazy weather – from giant hail to frozen waves to giant dust tornadoes – you kind of have to enjoy it, even though by any measure this is a very, very silly movie.
9. Sharknado (2013)
A waterspout sucks sharks out of the ocean and flings them across Los Angeles. Improbable? Try impossible, but so what? To be honest, this is the sort of thing what should have happened years ago, especially in the vicinity of Beverly Hills.
Source: Syfy Films
8. The day after tomorrow (2004)
«Thanks to this movie, everyone now knows how the Gulf Stream works,» Weatherzone meteorologist Esteban Abellan points out. He’s right. There were some meteorological facts in this «cli sci fi di» movie – a term we just invented which means climate science fiction disaster. There was also a bunch of junk science, but as WZ meteorologist Jess Miskelly adds, «the theme of rapid climate change due to ocean circulation changes is real».
7. Ledová bouře (1997)
The meteorological event in the movie’s title serves as both an actual thing happening outside, and as a metaphor for frosty relationships. This drama stars, among others, a teenage Tobey Maguire. Definitely the best weather film where most of the action takes place indoors.
6. Mist (2007)
Stephen King and dense spooky mist. Enough said. For all the movies with dramatic weather like blizzards and tornadoes, nothing sets a creepy vibe like mist. Strictly meteorologically speaking, fog is actually denser than mist, so the original novella that inspired this movie should probably have been called «The Fog». We’ll give Steve a pass.
5. Frozen (2013)
This snow-filled animated fantasy became one of the highest grossing films of all time and featured a song in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. Seriously, can you imagine being able to build an epic snow castle while belting out a chart-topping single? All in a day’s work if you’re the Snow Queen.
4. Twister (1996)
It had tornadoes, flying cows and Helen Hunt. Apart from popcorn, what more could you possibly want?
3. The Perfect Storm (2000)
Could a cold nor-easter off the US Atlantic coast really hook up with a hurricane and dance a wild, furious weather dance? Well, this film was based on a storm that sort of did that in 1991. Kind of. Anyway who cares, it had George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and John C. Reilly, plus an awesome CGI wave at the end. A weather classic.
Zdroj: Warner Bros.
2. Fargo (1996)
Fargo was a black comedy crime film which was not necessarily ABOUT the weather. Yet the frozen wastelands of Minnesota could have won an Oscar for best supporting actor. You could literally feel the chill as the bumbling characters stumbled through snowy landscapes, whose pristine whiteness concealed the dark depths of the depraved human soul. Or something. Heck, we’re not movie critics. Anyway weather set the film’s tone, and the same goes for the three follow-up TV series.
1. Hromnice (1993)
This is a tale of two meteorologists called Phil. One, Punxsutawney Phil, is a prognosticating groundhog. The other, Phil Connors, is Bill Murray’s magnificently curmudgeonly, disgruntled meteorologist. You know what happens next. We could tell you, but you’ve all seen the movie so it’d just be like Groundhog Day…
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