Samuel J.

Beck

Atmosphere 1010

Dr. Mascio, Instructor

November 28, 2018

Weather in the Movies

Interstellar opens its scenes with a brief slow pan shot of a toy spaceship covered in dust

as the voice of an elderly woman starts to describe what it was like living back in the day. A few

elderly people are interviewed as it seems some time after the disaster that is explained in the

movie. They describe the living conditions of the day, the fields and fields of corn, the blight and

its acts of destruction, and the dust. One man tells how when they set the table for dinner they

would set the cups and plates upside down to keep them clean from the dust.
 The world of Interstellar has been ravaged by “the blight”, a crop eating machine, the

root cause of the Dust Bowl like conditions that are seen in the movie. This blight is not well

explained but we have a solid general idea on what it is. It

is a modifying plant eating disease that moves from plant

to plant destroying the entirety of the plant population and

as result is slowly starving the world. The only sustainable

edible plant crop that is left is corn, as the wheat, barely,

and various other agriculture has been wiped out. The problem here is that corn is short rooted

plant and because that is mostly all that is left the soil is very loose. There isn’t any deep roots

sunk into the soil to hold down the dirt and so when the winds pick up like they often do, it picks

up the loose dirt on top and blows it every witch way. The conditions in the movie are very

similar to what actually happened in the United States in the 1930’s with the Dust Bowl with

shallow rooted plants dominating the landscapes.

The dust storms are a constant threat to the remaining inhabitants of the earth. Animals

are suffocated, dust gets in electronics, and dust storms do substantial damage to all in its path.

The movie portrays the dust storms mainly during the

baseball game and the way home from it and how they

escape and deal with them. Cooper and his kids have to

wear masks and goggles to protect themselves from the

hazards of the blowing dust.

The science is fairly sound for the movie

and how it sets up having an environment where dust storms are present. As the “World

Meteorological Center” says, “They are usually caused by thunderstorms – or strong pressure
gradients associated with cyclones – which increase wind speed over a wide area. These strong

winds lift large amounts of sand and dust from bare, dry soils into the atmosphere, transporting

them hundreds to thousands of kilometres away.” In the Interstellar world there isn't any special

phenomenon that causes the dust storms explicitly, it is very similar to real life that happen from

a thunderstorm and unstable air lifting up the dust that's on the ground. This works a little too

well in Interstellar because of the excess of dust in the environment and hence the presence of

dust storms creating a Dust Bowl like environment.

 Works Cited

“Dust Bowl.” Interstellar Wiki, interstellarfilm.wikia.com/wiki/Dust_Bowl.

Miller , Ron, and Ina Tegan. “Desert Dust, Dust Storms and Climate.” NASA, NASA, Apr. 1997,

www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/miller_01/.

Nolan, Christopher, director. Interstellar. Interstellar, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros Pictures,

24 Oct. 2014.

“Sand and Dust Storms.” World Meteorological Organization, 8 Nov. 2018,

public.wmo.int/en/our-mandate/focus-areas/environment/sand-and-dust-storm.

“The Dust Bowl.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 2012,

www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/legacy/.

“This Massive Dust Storm Was Shot from a Fleeing News Helicopter.” PetaPixel, 6 Aug. 2018,

petapixel.com/2018/08/04/this-massive-dust-storm-was-shot-from-a-fleeing-news-helicopter/.