Meteorologists hit with death threats

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Meteorologists say they’ve been getting death threats for debunking wild conspiracy theories that they and the government are somehow behind the devastating hurricanes ravaging the US.

“Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes,” Katie Nickolaou, a Michigan-based meteorologist, wrote on X earlier this week alongside a screenshot of one threat she’d received.

“I can’t believe I just had to type that.”

The post aimed at Nickolaou, who works at the WLNS TV station, had called for others to “stop the breathing of those that made them and their affiliates.”

Meanwhile, Washington, DC-based meteorologist Matthew Cappucci said he has received hundreds of messages from people accusing him of modifying the weather to create hurricanes with space lasers.

“For me to post a hurricane forecast and for people to accuse me of creating the hurricane by working for some secret Illuminati entity is disappointing and distressing — and it’s resulting in a decrease in public trust,” Cappucci told Rolling Stone.

And veteran Alabama meteorologist James Spann said he too has faced a barrage of threats warning him: “Stop lying about the government controlling the weather or else.”

“I’ve been doing this for 46 years and it’s never been like this,” Spann, who works at WBMA, told the outlet.

“You’re working with two to three hours of sleep for multiple weeks under a high-stress situation and then you deal with these threats that come in, it’ll beat you down.”

The conspiracy theories have picked up steam after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) appeared to suggest the spate of ferocious storms — with Hurricane Helene quickly followed this week by Hurricane Milton — were controlled events.

One thing that I have noticed while we are in the midst of the 2024 hurricane season is the number of “conspiracy theories” on social media indicating that our government somehow can change the track of hurricanes, or alter precipitation patterns that change the resulting rainfall distribution for either monetary or political purposes. The Earth’s atmosphere is a very complex and fluid system.

Weather patterns and storm systems can’t be altered by lasers, cloud seeding, or thousands of fans blowing in the same direction. Some of the same people who post these conspiracies claim that the government can’t do anything right and is useless. However, they are VERY successful in controlling the weather.

There was a time when the U.S. government thought that they actually could control major storms like hurricanes. To learn what tactics were proposed, and some of the ideas were quite shocking!

It was the 1950s, the Cold War was ramping up and the world situation was tense. While high school kids were “Rockin’ Around The Clock”, the U.S. Government was doing the same (well sort of) attempting to thwart constant threats to national security.

Suddenly, another threat emerged. The U.S. East Coast was being ravaged by a series of major hurricanes. These storms were creating misery for many residents and they were also a threat to various military installations (including naval bases). What could be done to temper these meteorological beasts? The hurricanes posed a threat to national security they said. There were many suggestions, some were sensible and others were downright shocking.

The 1950s – East Coast Hurricane Onslaught
On August 31, 1954, Hurricane Carol made landfall on eastern Long Island and then in eastern Connecticut. Carol was the most powerful storm to strike Southern New England since the Great New England Hurricane of 1938.

Hurricane Carol produced widespread destruction along the Southern New England Coast. Some coastal towns in Connecticut and Rhode Island were almost completely destroyed by its powerful winds. Carol also produced a storm surge of over 14 feet in Providence, Rhode Island, and New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Over 4,000 homes, 3,500 automobiles, and 3,000 boats were destroyed and 65 lives were lost as a result of Hurricane Carol. Damages totaled over 460 million (1954 dollars or 4.7 billion dollars in 2024)!

Carol wasn’t the only hurricane that ravaged the East Coast of the U.S. during that time period. In fact, Carol was the first of five major hurricanes that made landfall through September 1955. Edna, Hazel, Connie, and Ione were the others. There would be more during the rest of the decade, ending with Hurricane Donna in 1960.

This was a tense period of the “Cold War.” Hurricanes impacted large population centers and East Coast military facilities. Not only were these hurricanes costly, but they also threatened national security, especially our naval bases.

In the previous decade, most of the major hurricanes made landfall on the Florida Peninsula, much of the state was sparsely populated at the time. The significant rise in hurricane activity along the East Coast in the 1950s was quite surprising and alarming!

As anxiety rose in some sectors of the government, solutions were sought for mitigating the effects of these hurricanes. Ideas were solicited from the military and the meteorological community and some, thankfully not all, came to fruition.

Project Plowshare – Nuke The Hurricanes
Project Plowshare was a U.S. government program whose mission included the use of nuclear weapons for peaceful construction purposes. As part of the program, 31 nuclear warheads were detonated in 27 separate tests.

Proposed uses for nuclear devices under Project Plowshare included the widening of the Panama Canal cutting paths through mountainous areas for highways, and connecting inland river systems. Other proposals involved blasting underground caverns for water, natural gas, and petroleum storage.

In the publication “Proceedings of the second Plowshare Symposium” in 1959 a former World War II Air Force Meteorologist, Jack Reed, who had flown B-29 missions into Pacific Typhoons presented a proposal of possibly weakening or directing hurricanes by a series of nuclear explosions.

His first idea dealt with the possibility of weakening hurricanes by changing their direction. The mission would involve igniting nuclear warheads in the eyewall of the hurricane.

Furthermore, he hypothesized that a hurricane could actually be destroyed by a nuclear explosion in the eye. He indicated that since the eye of the storm is the warmest part, a nuclear explosion in the eye would engulf this hot air and carry the power of the hurricane into the stratosphere.

The hot air in the eye would move upward and colder air from the eyewall would rush in and crush the hurricane.

The nuclear weapons would be delivered into the hurricanes by B-29 bombers. Another suggestion was that the nuclear bombs could be delivered up into the hurricane by submarines. Jack Reed presented his idea to a project Plowshare Symposium in 1959.

The idea was discussed throughout government circles. In fact, the issue remained a discussion topic for quite some time.

According to an article in National Geographic on October 11, 1961, in a speech to the National Press Club, Francis W. Reichelderfer, the head of the U.S. Weather Bureau, said he could “imagine the possibility someday of exploding a nuclear bomb on a hurricane far out at sea.”

Ultimately, the idea was never implemented. One reason is that other scientists found fundamental flaws in the logic of destroying hurricanes with nuclear devices. It would probably take an incredible amount of nuclear bombs to have any possible effect.

Another was that prevailing wind currents could bring harmful radiation into populated areas. Previous Plowshare initiatives resulted in excessively high amounts of radiation emitted into the atmosphere over the United States. Some of these experiments and consequences were not shared, or shared sparingly, with the general public.

Project Stormfury – Seed The Hurricanes
In 1961, another method of hurricane modification was attempted. Eight cylinders of silver iodide were dropped into Hurricane Ester and a slight weakening of the storm was noted. Because of what was deemed as a “positive” mission another government project was considered.

On October 31, 1961, Hurricane Hattie made a direct hit on Belize City (in what was then British Honduras) with a storm surge of 13 – 15 feet. Hattie was responsible for about 400 deaths and left thousands homeless.

Belize City was almost totally destroyed. There were rumors that the government of British Honduras accused the United States, through cloud seeding, of altering the path of the hurricane toward Belize City. Another aspect of this rumor was that the U.S. government eased immigration restrictions on British Honduras for the following year. These rumors have not been substantiated, however.

In 1962, the government initiated Project Stormfury. This project involved the seeding of hurricanes with silver dioxide

Hurricanes had to fit into certain parameters to be seeded. It should have a less than 10 percent chance of approaching inhabited land within 24 hours it had to be within the range of the seeding aircraft. It also had to be an intense hurricane with a discernible eye.

For a variety of reasons, only a couple of hurricanes were seeded, that we know of. Hurricane Beulah was in 1963 along with Hurricane Ginger in 1971.

Winds in Hurricane Beulah decreased after seeding and Hurricane Ginger was not developed enough for verifiable results. The government initially deemed the Hurricane Beulah experiment as successful.

The initial hypothesis was that silver iodide would allow supercooled water in the storm to freeze, disrupting the inner structure of the hurricane. It was later determined that most hurricanes do not contain enough supercooled water for cloud seeding to be effective. Beulah could just as easily be weakened due to natural processes within the storm. The same would have been true for Hurricane Ester.

After millions of dollars spent and no conclusive results, Project Stormfury was canceled in 1983. The information gained about hurricanes during that time period was helpful to forecasters and researchers, however.

Establishment Of The National Hurricane Center
In the 1950s, it became critical that tropical cyclones receive special attention because of the growth of cities along coastal areas. The population of Florida began to grow at a greater pace, as well. Plus, the general public was becoming more involved in travel and recreational activities.

Research and forecasting of tropical cyclones were becoming a priority in scientific circles. There was an increasing need for a specific office to take care of these increasing demands. The government concluded that more information should be gathered about tropical cyclones to understand them better and eventually forecast them better.

The National Hurricane Research project was created in 1955. There were no computer models in those days to forecast weather and weather satellites were a few years down the road. The best way to study tropical cyclones and carry out experiments on hurricanes at that time was by flying aircraft into them and gathering data.

The aircraft used for reconnaissance missions into the eye of the hurricane was the VW-4. The crews were “Hurricane Hunters” dedicated to weather reconnaissance. VW-4 lost one aircraft and crew in the penetration of Hurricane Janet in 1955 and another aircraft to severe damage in another hurricane but that crew made it home.

Radar could also track hurricanes but the radars back then were primitive and could only pick up the hurricanes when they were close to landfall.

On July 1, 1956, the National Hurricane Information Center was established in Miami, Florida which became a library for all hurricane-related information emanating from the United States Weather Bureau Office.

The Miami Hurricane Warning Office moved from the Lindsey Hopkins Hotel to the Aviation Building on July 1, 1958.

Forecasts included in hurricane advisories were issued one day into the future in 1954 before being extended to two days in 1961, and three days in 1964.

Interestingly enough, the focus of major U.S. hurricane landfalls shifted from the East Coast in the decade of the 1950s to the Gulf Coast in the 1960s.

Today, the National Hurricane Center contains the hurricane specialists unit. This group includes chief meteorologists that predict the actions of tropical storms. These specialists work rotating eight-hour shifts from May through November, monitoring weather patterns in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific oceans.

Communication of critical information to the public and preparedness ahead of the hurricane is extremely important. Whenever a tropical or subtropical cyclone forms, they issue advisories every six hours.

Public advisories are issued more often when a tropical storm or hurricane intensity threatens land. The specialists coordinate with officials in each country likely to be affected. They forecast and recommend watches and warnings.

Today, hurricane forecasts and hurricane preparation statements issued to the public are more important than ever. The population is increasing in coastal areas and our coastline continues to be threatened by many factors. Maybe someday in the far-off future, humans will be able to control the weather … but don’t hold your breath.

Hurricanes are forces of nature that are FAR BEYOND OUR CONTROL! The US Government can’t alter its path or change its inner structures to have any real effect. We can continue to learn more about them, design computer models that can forecast them better, and track them with modern-day satellites and a host of other technologies.

How is it we can supposedly control hurricanes, but we can't control MTG???