John Morales has nothing to be sorry for.
Overwhelmed by the intensity of the approaching Hurricane Milton, the Miami meteorologist’s voice broke as he described the death and destruction in its wake.
“It’s just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane,” Morales said. “It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours,” which stopped the meteorologist mid-sentence as he gathered himself to explain the significance of the fast-developing storm.
“I apologize,” he said. “This is just horrific. But the storm is gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico where the seas are just incredibly hot. A record hot. You know what’s causing that. I don’t need to tell you. Climate change. Global warming.”
Morales continued to explain how Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula was expected to be hit by the hurricane’s “dirty side” — 160 mph winds. The communities there “have just the very basics of life. So it’s going to be very tough.”
If it remains a Category 5, Milton will be the most forceful hurricane to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast in almost 100 years. And this comes on top of Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm whose 140 mph winds and extreme rainfall affected the entire Southeast in late September.
Leading up to Helene, Morales did his best to warn of its potential.
A hurricane that size will “claim lives,” Morales said. “It also wrecks lives.”
MORALES’ emotional weather report has gone viral, and as such will likely face backlash.
A meteorologist for 40 years, Morales has prided himself on being a “non-alarmist” when it comes to forecasting the weather.
He’d still be that way if he could.
But the climate has dramatically changed over the course of his 62 years.
The oceans are now hotter and more volatile. Intense storms develop with alarming speed.
“Today I am no longer as comfortable putting everyone at ease in regard to the strength of a storm. I am afraid of rapid intensification cycles happening at the drop of a hat,” Morales wrote in a 2023 essay for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
If he is to do his job — inform people about the weather — he would be remiss for not explaining the link between global warming and extreme weather.
NOT EVERYONE sees it that way.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a law last May deleting the term “climate change” from state statutes.
Such an act not only thwarts the state’s ability to develop green energy, but encourages an anti-science attitude.
