T.O.T.O., or Totable Tornado Observatory, is a device designed by Dr. Al Bedard and Carl Ramzy of the NOAA Environmental Research Laboratory. The acronym came from the name of Dorothy's dog Toto in the movie The Wizard of Oz (1939). This T.O.T.O. is a 55-gallon barrel equipped with data recording devices, including anemometers, pressure sensors, and humidity sensors. In theory, meteorologists could place T.O.T.O. in the path of a tornado, flip the switches, and let nature take its course. As the tornado blasted over and around T.O.T.O., the devices could record all kinds of important data about the conditions inside a twister.
Unfortunately, there were complications. Though researchers could unload and prepare T.O.T.O in roughly 30 seconds, it was still extremely dangerous to be in the path of an oncoming tornado. In addition, it was difficult to find the perfect spot for placement and T.O.T.O.'s tall metal structure could attract lightning. Researchers made many attempts to deploy T.O.T.O. into a tornado but all of them failed. T.O.T.O.'s closest encounter was in 1984 when a small tornado knocked it over. T.O.T.O.'s chief success was in serving as a portable weather station, but in 1987, the National Severe Storms Laboratory retired T.O.T.O. due to safety concerns and logistical problems. Simply put, researchers decided that it wasn't a good idea to haul around a 400-pound lightning rod.
In spite of T.O.T.O.'s shortcomings, it became the inspiration for the action movie Twister (1996). In the film, DOROTHY and D.O.T. were barrel-shaped devices that were supposed to deploy dozens of lightweight sensors into a tornado.
Today, scientists have developed more advanced devices to place in the path of a tornado and measure and record data. These devices are smaller and lighter, and researchers can safely set many of them out over a large area to increase the likelihood that one will encounter an oncoming tornado.
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