During an unforgettable twister scene, a devastating funnel-shaped tornado approaches closer and closer toward the farm. Gusty winds blow hard, chickens scurry around, horses are let go, and the farm hands with Auntie Em and Uncle Henry prepare to take cover behind the doors of the safe, sheltered storm cellar. Zeke points toward the dark horizon where an evil shape forms:

It's a twister! It's a twister!

Auntie Em shrieks and calls out repeatedly for Dorothy, and is finally dragged down into the storm shelter by the men. The wind is so fierce and howling that screams and voices cannot be heard. While running toward her farm, Dorothy also sees the tornado cloud from the entrance road.

After reaching the front door to the house, she opens the screen door -it is dramatically ripped from its hinges and blown away. Inside, she moves through the rooms and doorways where she screams out for everyone, but the howling wind drowns out her voice.

Left entirely alone and unprotected from the dangerous forces of nature, she is unable to open the door of the locked, underground cyclone shelter where the five adults have already taken shelter. Returning to the house and continually calling for Auntie Em, she stumbles into her bedroom where the window frame/shutter breaks away and she is hit on the side of her head and knocks her unconscious. For a moment, she lies back on her bed - the side view of her face blurs and becomes a double image.

In a marvelous fantasy scene, the tiny farm house furiously whirls and dizzily spins into the sky inside the tornado spout. As Dorothy awakens, she looks out of her bedroom window. It frames, like a movie screen, objects that float and tumble by. Dorothy sits up on her bed and looks into the black column of smoke of the cyclone:

"We must be up inside the cyclone!"

Outside the window, other peculiar things pass by. An old lady, a cow, debris, two gentlemen steadily rowing a boat, then Miss Gulch madly pedaling her bicycle through the air. Suddenly, the wicked old woman is transformed into a cackling witch with a pointed hat and cape on a zooming broomstick.

When the twisting, swirling house finally spins toward the ground, it crash lands with a jolt and everything suddenly turns still. She is uninjured, but realizes she has been "transported" from Kansas to somewhere else peaceful and tranquil. With Toto in her arms, she apprehensively and curiously opens the farm house front door to go outside.