About Toto...
There is a limited amount of information on TOTO, theTOtable Tornado Observatory, a project that took place in the mid 1980's. The following is from retired NSSL scientist Chuck Doswell's "Frequently Asked Questions about Storm Chasing" page.
Does "Dorothy" or something like it (as seen in "Twister") actually exist?
In the movie "Twister," the chasers are trying to deploy something called "Dorothy" that consists of a large number of instrument packages inside plastic "bubbles" that will send data about the tornado back to the chasers. The container holding these sensors looks to be modeled after a real instrument package called "TOTO" (for TOtable Tornado Observatory) that was developed by Dr. Al Bedard of ERL in Boulder. The idea was for a chaser to put TOTO down in the path of a tornado so that data from the passage of the tornado would be recorded on magnetic tape. TOTO was roughly the size of a 55 gallon oil drum and was designed to stay put (hopefully) during the passage of a tornado. For a number of years, it was carried about during storm chases by Prof. Howard Bluestein of the School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma. Then, TOTO was given to NSSL to attempt deployment. All these efforts were essentially unsuccessful because it is difficult to put objects in the path of a tornado! Only once was TOTO put nearly into the tornado path; that particular chase effort is "immortalized" by the PBS "NOVA" program on tornadoes that aired first in 1986. TOTO has been "retired" for a number of years and now rests quietly in the NOAA museum in Silver Spring, Maryland.
As it now stands, the technology that "Dorothy" uses is well beyond our real capabilities. There are several technical barriers to achieving that sort of a probe of a tornado, and it is not entirely clear that having such a "swarm" of sensors within the circulation of a tornado would provide all that much of scientific value. During VORTEX, scientists attempted to deploy an improved version of TOTO, called "turtles." At least one successful deployment of turtles was done during VORTEX, but the results are not yet available.
View the TOTO deployment on April 29, 1985. 
To download RealNetworks' RealPlayer click here.
Return to Tornado FAQ
