Nearly five days before Hurricane Milton hit Florida, National Hurricane Center forecasters predicted its track within just 12 miles of where the storm later made landfall.
Hurricane Helene forecasts were similarly precise: The National Weather Service warned long before that storm reached shore that “record flooding” in North Carolina, some 400 miles from the coast, would be “one of the most significant weather events” in the state’s history.
“The forecasts were quite accurate, and nobody can say they were surprised by the landfall location and intensity of these storms,” said John Morales, a meteorologist and hurricane specialist for NBC 6 South Florida.
And yet, at a time when hurricane forecasts are at their most accurate, some meteorologists say they’ve never faced so much skepticism, hatred and conspiracy-minded pushback.
They’ve been falsely accused, mostly on social media, of steering the hurricanes to Florida or Appalachia. Some have reported threats of violence online, while others say they’ve experienced personal attacks.
“In the past two months, there’s been such an uptick in conspiracy theories, especially on social media, it’s undermining my ability to do my job effectively,” said Matthew Cappucci, a meteorologist with MyRadar Weather and The Washington Post. “People will see an errant signal on a radar and think we’re zapping hurricanes. There are people who think we’re able to steer hurricanes into red states.”
Cappucci said social media commenters have berated him for his Harvard education and said he should be fired. At a bar in Louisiana recently, Cappucci added, he was interrupted by a man who noticed his MyRadar shirt and insisted that Cappucci worked for Bill Gates.
“He spent the next 14 minutes harassing me about weather modification,” Cappucci said.
Bradley Panovich, chief meteorologist at WCNC in Charlotte, North Carolina, said messages have become “more personal, more vile, more persistent.”
“It’s also taking time and effort away from the job of forecasting the weather,” he added.
The wave of opposition and attacks has come as meteorologists are also dealing with the emotional toll of more severe and damaging hurricanes as climate change intensifies.
“Losing people in a weather disaster is like a doctor losing a patient on the operating table,” said Kim Klockow McClain, a senior social scientist supporting the National Weather Service. “Forecasters feel like they can save everyone. They take it personally.”
Hurricane forecasts have become more accurate
Hurricane forecasts have improved dramatically over the past 50 years.
Shel Winkley, a meteorologist with the nonprofit research group Climate Central, said advances in computing power and a better understanding of storm physics now allows the National Hurricane Center to issue forecast cones — probable paths — before a tropical storm has even developed.
“Our cones have gotten skinnier,” Winkley said, meaning forecasters are more certain of a hurricane’s path.
The National Hurricane Center publishes data each year about how its forecasts have aligned with reality, and the trend shows a decline in track errors since the 1970s. Back then, a storm forecast issued 36 hours ahead was likely off by roughly 230 miles, according to NOAA. In the 2020s so far, that error is roughly 57 miles.
Cappucci called the center’s forecast of Hurricane Milton “almost prescient” and one of the best in its history.
But as forecasts have advanced, so has the spread of misinformation online. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., suggested on X that scientists can control the weather. (Humans cannot control hurricanes.)
“No matter how good your forecast is, it doesn’t matter if people aren’t listening,” Cappucci said. “If people are turned to the wrong channel or an app, or Bubba’s website, or conspiracy theories on Twitter, it doesn’t matter.”
Complicating the picture is evidence that climate change is causing many tropical storms to intensify more rapidly than in the past, which makes forecasts of a hurricane’s intensity challenging.
“The forecast models haven’t taken into account the warmth of the ocean fully and the climate aspect,” Winkley said.
Hurricane Milton’s winds increased by 92 mph in about 24 hours — a level of rapid intensification that caused Morales, a professional meteorologist of 40 years, to choke up on live television.
“The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events is changing me. It’s making me be more alarmed than I used to be,” Morales said.
‘Through political lenses’
James Spann, a meteorologist in Birmingham, Alabama, said on the WeatherBrains podcast last week that he’d received more hateful messages this October than at any other point in his career.
“My sin was posting a link to a FEMA page about rumor control, and within five minutes, I got a message from a guy who said, ‘Go, F yourself and retire now,’” Spann said.
Several meteorologists suggested that the timing of two intense storms in the lead-up to the election may have set some people off.
“When disasters happen, we always see people ask questions trying to understand how and why something so terrible could occur,” Klockow McClain said. “Those questions are supercharged with the background political environment. Everyone is thinking about it. It’s part of our consciousness. It makes sense that people would start to reason through a political lens.”
Politics did play a role in a recent, well-documented case of harassment.
Chris Gloninger left as chief meteorologist at KCCI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa, in June 2023 following death threats over his climate change coverage.
A 65-year-old man pleaded guilty to harassing Gloninger and was fined $105, according to online court records. Police records show the man emailed Gloninger saying that he was “sick and tired of your liberal conspiracy theory,” and that Gloninger was a “worthless Biden puppet.”
Gloninger said he sees recent claims that meteorologists are controlling the weather as a new form of aggressive climate denial on the right.
“When I shared my story, I think there were some saying this was such an anomaly to what’s happening. Unfortunately, I don’t think it was,” Gloninger said.
‘It’s on us to explain’
Klockow McClain said meteorologists may need new strategies to counter misinformation — perhaps humanizing scientists more, or messaging designed to “inoculate” against common types of misinformation, like weather control.
“It’s on us to explain, what is cloud seeding, what are its effects, how is it done, how often is it done?” Klockow McClain said.
Humans cannot control weather systems as large as hurricanes. However, there have been efforts to modify the weather in a very limited way through cloud-seeding technologies, which date to the 1950s. The approach typically involves spraying silver iodide into clouds to draw water out of the atmosphere and produce snow or rain. Today, cloud seeding programs are used primarily in Western states looking to boost water supplies — on a far smaller scale than a hurricane.
In a way, though, a significant influence on hurricanes is human behavior, in the form of burning fossil fuels. Warmer oceans provide tropical storms more fuel, and higher temperatures allow the atmosphere to hold more water, leading to heavier rainfall.
“We don’t have the ability to manipulate, change weather, within a matter of hours or days,” Winkley said. “I’m not sure why you can wrap your head around that, but you think humans can’t alter the course of the climate over decades to put us in the place we’re at.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
