Tara Reid says a sharknado could really happen. Is she right?
"Sharknado," the 2013 made-for-TV film about聽a twister that lifts sharks out of the ocean and drops them, alive and hungry, into downtown Los Angeles, will soon have a sequel. And according to one of the film's heroines, the plot of "Sharknado 2: The Second One," is not entirely implausible.聽
"You know, ," actress and model Tara Reid said to聽GQ magazine.
"Which is crazy," she added. "Not that it鈥攖he chances of it are, like, you know, it's like probably 鈥榩igs could fly.' Like, I don't think pigs could fly, but actually sharks could be stuck in tornados. There could be a sharknado."
Is she correct? Could a waterspout lift up a great white shark and transport it from sea to land? And how long would it survive?
If it ever did happen, sharks would not be the first aquatic creatures to unexpectedly become airborne. As recently as 2010, residents of an interior Australian desert town reported hundreds of fish hurdling out of the sky. A tornado most likely swept up the fish and water, only to deposit them hundreds of miles inland,聽. Throughout history, there have been reports of frogs, jellies, crayfish, and raining from the sky. 聽
But sharks? "There are records of small fish being picked up by waterspouts, but sharks are pretty big and that makes it a lot harder" Harold Brooks, a scientist at NOAA's聽National Severe Storms Laboratory, 聽in 2013.聽
If a tornado were powerful enough to carry a shark, the resulting rotating debris of wood and metal would kill the animal, Dr. Brooks added.
At least in theory, a tornado could generate winds strong enough to keep a shark aloft. Kim Martini, a physical oceanographer at the聽University of Washington in Seattle, calculates that one would need a to fly a 2,200-lb. shark. Wind speeds like that are rare, but not unheard of in the most powerful twisters.
"Carry a diversionary herring just in case," Dr. Martini writes.
A tornado might be able to keep a shark in flight, but could a violently rotating column of wind pluck the animal out of the water in the first place?聽
Probably not. Sharks, like most sensible animals, try to avoid intense storms.聽During one Florida twister that struck the Ft. Lauderdale theme park聽Ocean World in 1969, the park's head said that the captive sharks 鈥渉ead[ed] for the bottom of their shallow pool when the winds began to build,鈥� according to an .
Even if a sharknado were to succeed in capturing a shark, it is unlikely that the shark would take out its misfortune on humans, as聽.
So in the end, is Ms. Reid right? Under certain conditions, a twister could fling a shark carcass some distance, possibly on top of a swimsuit-clad, chainsaw-wielding beachgoer. But it's probably safe to say that it wouldn't happen twice.聽
