Hurricane Milton live: Harris accuses Trump of ‘playing politics’ with hurricane comments

“Harris and White House criticize Donald Trump for attacks on federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton

2h ago

Vehicles navigate the damage as access to Matlacha, Florida, is reduced to a one-lane bridge. About 12 hours after Milton blew though, power lines were down, homes were damaged and residents were trying to remove debris on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. Photograph: Carl Juste/TNS/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

1h ago07.16 EDT

US meteorologists face death threats as hurricane conspiracies surge

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.”

06.34 EDT

The Guardian has published the following editorial on Hurricane Milton and other disasters:

The preparations for Hurricane Milton were on a mammoth scale, as the clean-up will be. The storm thankfully lost some of its force before it slammed into Florida, making landfall on Wednesday night as a category 3 hurricane. But many more lives would surely have been lost without the massive evacuation and the deployment of thousands of national guard troops and personnel from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

This was the second direct hit on the state in less than a fortnight, after Hurricane Helene, which killed at least 225 people in the US. The hotter ocean temperatures which worsened these storms are hundreds of times likelier because of human-made global heating, a new analysis has shown. Climate change may have increased the rain dumped on parts of the south by Helene by 50%, scientists believe. Another study has suggested such double punches could arrive every three years thanks to the continuing burning of fossil fuels.

Extreme weather is becoming the new normal. This autumn there has been heavy rain in the Sahara and flash floods in Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand. They follow spring’s torrential rain in Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Kenya, and heavy flooding in Germany. Lethal heatwaves hit south and south-east Asia and then the Mediterranean.

What marks Florida out is the disparity between the concern rightly given to the consequences of the storms and the widespread unwillingness of many there to acknowledge the causes of extreme weather – still less the role in it that the US plays. It has the greatest planet-heating emissions per capita of the top 10 emitters. Global heating makes preparing for such events, and recovering from their consequences, more essential than ever. But it is ludicrous to take such steps without also addressing what is making them more extreme and more frequent.

Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, warned that Milton would do “an awful lot of damage”. Yet not only is he aggressively pro-fossil-fuel, and the signatory of a ban on wind energy infrastructure. He is a climate change denierwho has signed a bill erasing the words from Florida statutes.“