A clip of NBC 6 South Florida meteorologist John Morales reporting on Hurricane Milton is going viral on social media as many viewers share his raw emotion. On Monday, Morales was reporting on the storm’s intensity and its projected path when his voice broke and he momentarily lost composure. To many commenters, he embodied the fear in the local community and the frustration over climate change disasters.
Morales explained some of the conditions that make Milton an “incredible, incredible hurricane” – particularly the unusually hot seawater fueling it. He said: “It has dropped 50 milibars in 10 hours,” then paused as he choked up. He went on: “I apologize, this is just horrific. It is just gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico, where you can imagine the seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot. A record hot, as you might imagine. You know what’s driving that, I don’t need to tell you – global warming, climate change, leading to this and becoming an increasing threat.”
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As a clip of this moment gained traction on social media, Morales elaborated in a post on X. He linked to an op-ed he wrote about Hurricane Helene, which he said explains “how extreme weather driven by global warming has changed me. Frankly, YOU should be shaken too, and demand #ClimateActionNow.”
Hurricane Milton has already passed by the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, battering communities like Cancun as a Category 4 storm. It is expected to make landfall on Tuesday evening on Florida’s Gulf Coast, likely centered just south of Tampa and north of Sarasota. However, one unique feature of this disaster is its sheer size and coverage, so the entire peninsula will feel the impact to some extent. Meteorologists are expecting record-breaking storm surges, and they expect this to be the most powerful storm to hit the Tampa area in over 100 years.
Scientists generally agree that human-caused climate change has made the impact of hurricanes more severe, as it has for other natural disasters as well. According to a report by NPR, the data shows that climate change has not increased the total number of hurricanes per season, but it has increased the intensity of the storms. In general, the primary reason for this intensity is warmer ocean temperatures, which lead to an increase in rainfall and worse flooding during storm surges.
Experts have proposed many ideas for mitigating the damage caused by intense hurricanes, which are summarized in this report by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. As for Hurricane Milton, the affected communities have already received evacuation orders or advisements, and more instructions will come directly from local authorities.
