A meteorologist based in Washington, D.C., was accused of helping the government cover up manipulating a hurricane. In Houston, a forecaster was repeatedly told to “do research” into the weather’s supposed nefarious origins. And a meteorologist for a television station in Lansing, Michigan, said she had received death threats.
“Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes,” wrote the forecaster in Michigan, Katie Nickolaou, in a social media post. “I can’t believe I just had to type that.”
Meteorologists’ role of delivering lifesaving weather forecasts and explaining climate science sometimes makes them targets for harassment, and this kind of abuse has been happening for years, weather experts said. But amid the conspiracy theories and falsehoods that have spiraled online after hurricanes Helene and Milton, they say the attacks and threats directed at them have reached new heights.
“We’re all talking about how much more it’s ramped up,” said Marshall Shepherd, who is the director of the University of Georgia’s Atmospheric Sciences Program and a former president of the American Meteorological Society. There has been “a palpable difference in tone and aggression toward people in my field,” he said.