'It's mind-blowing': US meteorologists face death threats as hurricane conspiracies grow | Hurricane Milton

Meteorologists tracking the progress of Hurricane Milton have been targeted by a barrage of conspiracy theories that they controlled the weather, abuse and even death threats in what they say has been an unprecedented rise in misinformation as two major hurricanes hit have hit the USA.

A number of falsehoods and threats have emerged in the two weeks since Hurricane Helene hit six states and left several hundred dead, followed by the Milton crash in Florida on Wednesday.

The level of misinformation spread by Donald Trump and his supporters is so great that it has made it impossible to help communities affected by the hurricane, according to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).

Katie Nickolaou, a Michigan-based meteorologist, said she and her colleagues bore the brunt of many of these conspiracies after receiving news reports claiming there were Category 6 hurricanes (they don't exist) that were coming from Meteorologists or the government created and controlled hurricanes (they aren't) and even that scientists were supposed to be killed and radars destroyed.

“I have never seen a storm that accumulated so much misinformation, we just put out a fire full of false information everywhere,” Nickolaou said.

“Some people say I created and controlled the hurricane, others assume we control the weather. I had to point out that a hurricane has the energy of 10,000 atomic bombs and we cannot hope to control that. But the rhetoric has become more violent, especially as people say those who created Milton should be killed.”

A post addressed to Nickolaou said: “Stop the breath of those who created her and her allies.” She replied: “Killing meteorologists will not stop hurricanes. I can’t believe I just had to type that.”

“People have called me a plethora of profanities, people telling me to shut up and sit down, people thinking it's OK to turn off the Doppler radar because they think it's controlled the weather,” Nickolaou said. “It takes a lot of work and free time to deal with all of this. It’s very tiring.”

As Helene and then Milton gained momentum in the Gulf of Mexico, a variety of misinformation was spread, such as Trump's claim that Fema had run out of money for hurricane survivors because it had been given to illegal immigrants. Violent threats are also commonplace, with posts on TikTok, Facebook and

Even stranger, several of Trump's closest allies have baselessly claimed that the federal government somehow controls hurricanes. “Hurricane Helene was an ATTACK caused by weather manipulation,” says a video shared by Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump.

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

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

“It’s beyond ridiculous,” Biden said of the claims surrounding weather control. “It's so stupid. It has to stop.”

Although humans can make hurricanes worse by burning fossil fuels and creating a hotter ocean and atmosphere that give hurricanes more energy, they cannot create, control, or direct individual storms. Additionally, Fema's disaster relief fund for hurricane-affected communities is independent of and unaffected by funds spent on providing shelter for migrants.

But for meteorologists, the Helene and Milton experiences are just an extreme continuation of a trend in which the public is increasingly getting its information from extremist figures online rather than from experts, according to Chris Gloninger, a former TV meteorologist and climate scientist who has faced threats During his predictions he spoke about the climate crisis.

“The modern Republican Party has an army of people who are on social media with huge followings and are just spreading this misinformation,” Gloninger said. “I see my former colleagues getting threats, I get messages that we're directing hurricanes into red states. “It's overwhelming, I've never seen anything like that in a disaster.”

Gloninger said meteorologists “will reach the point of burnout.” In which other professions are people specifically recruited simply because they do their job? We are simply trying to protect lives and property during extreme weather conditions.”