When a devastating hurricane destroys Los Angeles, nature’s most lethal predator takes control of sea, land and air as thousands of sharks terrorize those trapped under water.
Social media saved the film from itself, leading Syfy to air it twice and again. Soon after, there were multiple sequels in development.
Storms
In the acclaimed television movie Sharknado, a freak cyclone filled with man-eating sharks causes havoc across Los Angeles. It’s an intense tale of nature’s deadliest killer and leaves Fin (played by Ian Ziering) struggling to save his estranged wife April from its terrifying jaws.
Can a sharknado actually happen?
In order for there to be a Sharknado, the weather must have the ideal combination of heat and moisture which combines to form a waterspout. While waterspouts can form over various seawater temperatures, they tend to occur most frequently in warm tropical areas like Florida’s Keys.
Sharks often flee shallow waters in order to seek deeper waters, away from storm surges and strong currents. This behavior could be an attempt to avoid predators or an adaptation to extreme weather. It is possible that sharks’ natural pressure-sensing mechanism is disorienting them during an event that forces them out of their nursery grounds.
Sharks can survive out of water for extended periods, but they also tend to be sensitive to barometric changes and often sense a storm weeks in advance. When this occurs, sharks will take shelter and wait until the storm subsides.
Sharknadoes are relatively uncommon, as a very large storm must occur to cause this kind of impact on land. While hurricanes and tornadoes do happen occasionally in populated areas, sharknadoes remain uncommon occurrences.
If you want to experience Sharknado on the big screen, Florida Keys might be your best bet. This state is renowned for its waterspouts and has even been known to host great white sharks.
Sharknadoes are the ideal vehicle for waterspouts, which require the perfect balance of warmth and moisture to form. But your best chance at seeing one occur would be if there was a hurricane nearby.
Last month, Hurricane Irma caused a sharknado in Florida. As the monster storm made its way through the region, people started noticing sharks emerging from the water and swimming into residential areas – an incident which quickly gained notoriety on social media platforms and even went viral.
Waterspouts
When you hear the phrase “sharknado,” you might immediately associate it with a Syfy cult hit about man-eating sharks being pulled from the ocean and thrown at unwary landlubbers. However, in actuality this event occurred in Agusan del Sur in the Philippines and Lajamanu, Australia due to something called a waterspout.
A waterspout is an erupting tornado-like formation of air created when rising water vapor condenses and cools down. These phenomena typically occur in tropical or subtropical regions, but can also be observed in some parts of the United States and Europe.
Waterspouts were first documented in 1738 when Thomas Shaw of London coined the term. Since then, they have been observed worldwide; from Antarctica to Western Asia (including the Middle East) and Australia.
Waterspouts can form in light winds and usually dissipate quickly when they hit land. But they have the potential to be quite powerful and cause extensive damage inland, so be sure to listen for reports from NOAA Weather Radio when a waterspout is reported.
In the movie, a waterspout is accompanied by a hurricane and sweeps up sharks in its vortex that forms over the ocean. Afterward, strong winds carry these predators over land and into unsuspecting victims’ lives.
Scientists speculate that waterspouts could potentially cause a sharknado, though this phenomenon is highly unlikely to take place in reality due to sharks being too heavy for winds to carry away. While scientists speculate about its possibility, there are numerous reasons why it’s unlikely to actually happen in real life.
Another potential reason a waterspout may fail to capture sharks is that they require constant access to freshwater for respiration. Therefore, drawing enough water from the environment would not be sufficient enough for these marine predators to remain alive.
The last reason a waterspout cannot cause a sharknado is that sharks are too heavy to be lifted up by wind. That being said, this does not guarantee that no sharknado would occur in real life.
Tornadoes
If you’re a fan of the Sharknado series, you might have noticed that tornadoes in the films aren’t just one-off events. There’s actually an array of types – from sandnado to oilnado, firenado to lightningnado!
Tornadoes often form in the right-front quadrant of a thunderstorm due to an effect called wind shear. As air pressure changes with height, low-level winds become forced into developing horizontal rotation that’s tilted vertically towards updrafts.
Horizontal rotation can be incredibly strong, but not nearly as powerful as a tornado. An F5 tornado, for instance, would have winds of about 2,000 miles per hour and form only a few feet above the ground.
Tornadoes can’t pick up a shark and throw it into a town, particularly one as large as New York City. That’s because sharks are much larger than sand dollars and require much greater power for them to be flung into the streets.
Contrary to what was portrayed in “Sharknado,” there have been no reported cases of sharks being plucked out of the sea and landing on land by tornadoes, according to the Dakota Bureau of Meteorology. However, there have been reports of frogs and fish being dropped by tornadoes as well.
In 2010, there was even a reported “gatornado” that carried hundreds of fish from the sea into an interior Australian desert town. Harold Brooks, a scientist at NOAA’s National Severe Storm Laboratory, believes these fish fell out of the air from a waterspout caused by a tornado.
Even if a tornado were powerful enough to throw a shark onto a beach, it would likely die from exposure in the water before reaching shore. Furthermore, it’s unlikely that such an unprovoked shark attack would be much of an issue at the shore since such encounters are relatively infrequent.
Though its plot may appear absurd, animal tornadoes have been documented since ancient times. Athenaeus recorded that in Paconia and Dardania regions of Greece, frogs had been reported raining from the sky.
Sharks
A waterspout (or sharknado) is a weather phenomenon in which an unusual hurricane-like storm is lifted out of the ocean and then spread across land and sea. These powerful storms have the potential for destruction to marine life, so caution should be exercised when encountering one.
In 2013, the first Sharknado movie released and quickly gained notoriety due to its astounding 1.5 million viewers – earning it a place among Syfy’s Top 50 Most Viewed Films list.
When a waterspout hits Los Angeles, it raises sharks out of the ocean and deposits them in the city. This causes them to attack local residents, killing many and wreaking havoc.
These sharks, primarily great whites and hammerheads, can usually be identified by the light of the moon. Furthermore, these sharks often possess the ability to stay under water for extended periods of time.
They can survive outside the ocean for extended periods and even fly above it. These predatory fish, birds, and humans have been known to consume one another.
Though some believe a sharknado can be caused by an extreme weather event like a tornado, this is not usually true. Storms typically do not have the capacity to lift large numbers of sharks out of the ocean.
The initial sharknado sparked several theories, one being that tropical hurricanes cause these weather events. Unfortunately, none of these explanations was ever scientifically proved correct.
Another theory suggested the cyclone was caused by global warming. While some research has supported this idea, its scientific foundation remains uncertain.
There are several explanations for this theory. Primarily, animals need to be swept into cyclones in order to survive – an occurrence not unheard-of in nature.
Storms such as hurricanes can cause massive flooding in certain areas of the US and often draw sharks into them to escape danger.
