Netflix has delivered yet another documentary sensation with The Twister: Caught in the Storm, recounting the 2011 tornado that tore through Joplin, Missouri.
Taking place in May 2011, the Joplin tornado was the year's biggest, claiming 161 lives and leaving over 1000 people injured, along with destroying the town.
The Real People of Netflix's The Twister
Mac Wright
Heavy metal enthusiast and weather-obsessed Mac Wright is an amateur storm-chaser. On May 22, 2011, the adrenaline junkie woke up with a hangover following a “staying alive party” the night before and hopped to a car with his girlfriend Kaylee Parker and her brother Eric to chase down the tornado that was forming.
These days, according to his Facebook page, Mac and Kaylee are no longer together as he now has a daughter and is married to Shelby Bolton while still living in Joplin to this day.
Kaylee Parker
Kaylee describes herself as the “total opposite of [Mac] in a lot of ways” as she is a more logical thinker, with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, computational mathematics, information technology, and computer information science.
Growing up, Kaylee struggled to make friends as she lacked confidence, so she stayed close to the people she felt secure with such as Mac and her brother Eric.
After the group survived the tornado hiding out in a store, Kaylee is still close to Mac and the two remain close friends who meet regularly despite their break-up.
Chad Crilley
Chad Crilley was a young, aspiring meteorologist who gained an interest in the weather after watching the disaster flick Twister and had a garage weather studio.
Read more about star Glen Powell's 2024 revival of Twister.
He seized the opportunity of the oncoming storm to reach out to Joplin’s finest fields in the hopes of shadowing them. The one answer came from KOAM’s Doug Heady, who invited Chad to travel to Joplin with his mother to watch over his work.
Chad followed his dreams and worked as a meteorologist from several networks including WDHN in Dothan, Alabama. Recently, he left that behind to “[protect his] mental health” and focus on his YouTube channel full-time (via Facebook).
Doug Heady
At the time of the Joplin tornado, Doug Heady was a meteorologist at KOAM-TV after pursuing a career in the field from the young age of five years old.
He had long felt a connection to Joplin due to its vulnerability to torrential weather and was left heartbroken by the casualties and destruction of the May 2011 tornado.
Heady has stuck around all these years as the chief meteorologist at KOAM-TV, starting his day completing the forecast before spending hours on the air.
Andrew Keegan Tinney
Andrew Keegan Tinney was close to graduating from Joplin High School around the time of the tornado and was excited to be "spreading out and going onto the next phase of life." As the caption of the football team, he was a self-proclaimed jock who maintained a close circle of friends at the school.
As his father was the chief of the ambulance district, Keegan had undergone EMT training and quickly ventured out to help as soon as the storm passed. He survived the tornado by hiding out in his home, which was spared from its path.
After tragically losing his close friend Will Norton to the storm, Keegan is now leading a law firm as the co-founder of Dreyer & Tinney. He has also been married to his wife Brittany, who works at Mercy Hospital, since 2018 and the pair have two children.
Will Norton
Born on August 19, 1992, Will Norton was among the young victims of the Joplin tornado, having grown up in the area to parents Mark and Trish with sister Sara.
The Netflix documentary describes Will’s friendly and caring nature, and some at the school knew him for his willdabeast88883333 YouTube channel which he launched in September 2006. That channel now has 21,000 subscribers and has racked up millions of views across the videos.
While he was looking forward to pursuing his creativity at Chapman University’s film school in California, he, tragically, died on his way home from graduation after his seatbelt snapped in the car and the tornado pulled him through a sunroof.
Cecil Cornish
Cecil Cornish was in his junior year at Joplin High School in May 2011, having faced bullying in his youth for being gay. He described in The Twister how students wrote "queer" on bits of paper and flicked them at him, leaving him wondering if god's followers loved him as a gay man despite his loyal Christian faith.
Cecil was working at the Cherry Berry frozen yogurt shop and age 17 when the disaster hit and took the chance to aid customers through the terror.
These days, he can be found active on Instagram where he posts with his husband Landan, with whom he has built a strong circle of supportive friends. He now works in marketing after graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Graphic and Digital Design.
Steven Weersing
Steven Weersing was among the many who received life-threatening injuries as a result of the tornado, and his recovery has been described as a miracle.
At the time of the disaster, the 16-year-old was driving with his friends, ignoring the many weather warnings, and despite trying to avoid the tornado, they found themselves caught in its path as the car was lifted off the ground.
Upon being taken to hospital he was placed in a medically induced coma as he suffered cracked ribs and a punctured lung. And despite the low odds of survival, fighting a rare, aggressive flesh-eating fungus infecting his body down to the bone marrow, he survived thanks to Titanium plates placed into his chest.
Having made a full recovery, Steven still lives in Joplin and is in a relationship with Lena Dawn, having welcomed a son together in September 2023.
The Twister: Caught in the Storm is streaming now on Netflix.
