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Meteorologists tracking the advance of Hurricane Milton have been targeted by a deluge of conspiracy theories that they were controlling the weather, abuse and even death threats, amid what they say is an unprecedented surge in misinformation as two major hurricanes have hit the US.

A series of falsehoods and threats have swirled in the two weeks since Hurricane Helene tore through six states causing several hundred deaths, followed by Milton crashing into Florida on Wednesday.

The extent of the misinformation, which has been stoked by Donald Trump and his followers, has been such that it has stymied the ability to help hurricane-hit communities, according to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).

Katie Nickolaou, a Michigan-based meteorologist, said that she and her colleagues have borne the brunt of much of these conspiracies, having received messages claiming there are category 6 hurricanes (there aren’t), that meteorologists or the government are creating and directing hurricanes (they aren’t) and even that scientists should be killed and radar equipment be demolished.

“I’ve never seen a storm garner so much misinformation, we have just been putting out fires of wrong information everywhere,” Nickolaou said.

“I have had a bunch of people saying I created and steered the hurricane, there are people assuming we control the weather. I have had to point out that a hurricane has the energy of 10,000 nuclear bombs and we can’t hope to control that. But it’s taken a turn to more violent rhetoric, especially with people saying those who created Milton should be killed.”

One post aimed at Nickolaou said: “Stop the breathing of those that made them and their affiliates.” She responded: “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes. I can’t believe I just had to type that.”

“People have called me a plethora of curse words, people telling me to shut up and sit down, people who think it’s OK to take out Doppler radar because they think it is controlling the weather,” Nickolaou said. “It is eating up a lot of work and free time to deal with all of this. It’s very tiring.”

A wide range of misinformation has been spread as Helene and then Milton gathered pace in the Gulf of Mexico, such as claims spread by Trump that Fema had run out of cash for hurricane survivors because it has been given to illegal immigrants. Violent threats have also become common, with posts across TikTok, Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter), alleging that Fema workers should be beaten or “arrested or shot or hung on sight”.

More outlandishly, several of Trump’s closest allies have baselessly asserted that the federal government is somehow controlling hurricanes. “Hurricane Helene was an ATTACK caused by Weather Manipulation,” claimed a video shared by Michael Flynn, a former national security advisor to Trump.

“Yes they can control the weather,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right congresswoman, wrote on X last week. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

This steep rise in falsehoods has drawn a sharp response from Joe Biden, who has blamed Trump for an “onslaught of lies” and told the former president to “get a life.”

“It’s beyond ridiculous,” Biden said of the claims being made around weather control. “It’s so stupid. It’s got to stop.”

Although humans can worsen hurricanes by burning fossil fuels, creating a hotter ocean and atmosphere that gives hurricanes more energy, they cannot create, control or steer individual storms. Also, Fema’s disaster relief fund for hurricane-hit communities is separate from and unaffected by the money spent on giving shelter to migrants.

But for meteorologists, the experiences around Helene and Milton are just an extreme continuation of a trend where the public is increasingly getting its information from extremist figures online rather than experts, according to Chris Gloninger, a former TV meteorologist and climate scientist who faced threats for talking about the climate crisis during his forecasts.

“The modern Republican party has an army of people who are on social media with huge followings who just disseminate this misinformation,” Gloninger said. “I’m seeing my former colleagues getting threats, I’m getting messages that we are steering hurricanes into red states. It’s mindblowing, I’ve never seen anything like this in any disaster.”

Gloninger said that meteorologists are “going to reach a point of burnout. What other profession are people targeted for simply doing their job? All we are trying to do is protect life and property during extreme weather.”

  • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Articles like these ultimately make things worse since they never mention where disinformation comes from (corporate media), nor do they explain that people have no trust in the government because it seemingly exists only to send money to Ukraine and Israel. It’s not really surprising that they happily address the nazi conspiracy theories that meteorologists control the weather or that the federal government instantly puts all immigrants in mansions where they are waited upon 24/7 by countless beautiful harem sex slaves, but these articles never mention the endless money dumped on imperialism while peanuts are left to deal with worsening “natural” capitalism-caused disasters.

    Still a pretty interesting and bizarre story though. QAnon never went anywhere, it just stopped calling itself QAnon.

  • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    There’s something so frustrating about the liberal acceptance of right-wing media. Something like Fox News is transparently pure evil and based on nothing but lies, and yet liberals are so gullible that they refuse to destroy it, even though doing so would help them directly.

    • Sebrof [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      While I can’t speak for liberal policy makers and higher-ups, the average liberal voter is so supportive of civility politics and “free speech” that it’s going to get them killed. A protest I was at recently had neo-confererate counter protestors and a progressive lib I spoke to at the protest said that while they didn’t like the neo-confererates, they had as much right to be out there as we did, and we have to respect their freedom of speech.

      So yeah, the frustration is real.

      Liberals voters are fucking idealists and they don’t understand power. When they lose they’ll be so confused because they followed all the rules! They think politics has refs or something. Most won’t even care too much, they’ll keep shifting further and further right as the empire decays.

      • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        2 months ago

        Maybe. Just maybe. And it’s a small fucking maybe of an idea. But if the cops also cracked down on the right wing goons even if they protested 100% peacefully I could understand the liberal civility fetishism.

        But of course they never do until they get 100% out of pocket. The cops aren’t like tripping them with bikes and claiming they were assaulted when one of the fascist thumb-men stumbles into them.

        As I’ve said before that Voltaire idealism bullshit is gonna get some or all of them killed.

    • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      Liberal media obfuscating class struggle is also transparently evil and based on nothing but lies. They can’t destroy Fox News. To do that they would at least need to offer something that could stand up to scrutiny.

  • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    I remember when I’d enjoy reading HAARP conspiracies online every time there’d be some strong storm or hot spot in the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico from the sliver of Alex Jones knockoffs that I’d come across as a young 20-something.

    I miss the days when I could imagine wack-a-doo conspiracy theories as unserious and fun.

  • FnordPrefect [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    What, are the chuds mistaking forecasts with Sympathetic Magick Rituals at this point?

    frothingfash “I saw them, bold as brass, they drew these little diagrams of where the storm would go, and then the storm went there! What else could it be but Techno-Geo-mancy?!”

  • someone [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    On a related note, does it seem like the American media is really eager to move on from covering Milton’s effects? One of the biggest natural disasters in American history, millions affected, and all they show are occasional slideshows of not-that-badly-hit areas.

  • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    i mean, chuds and their vaunted “project 2025” want NOAA and the weather service gone and replaced with Accuweather (weather data spun through “AI” for a subscription fee!)

    so seems like it greatly assists them to create a “populist” groundswell of hate towards those organizations. FEMA, however, has been hated since the early 2000s

    i’ve already made my feelings about the weather service known before. one of the few good things the U.S. government does so fuck this shit and fuck liberals for letting conditions and propaganda get to this point

    once the next round of austerity comes i guarantee the libs will happily put NOAA and the weather service on the chopping block themselves