John Morales, one of South Florida’s longest running meteorologists, was delivering his weathercast for WTVJ/NBC6 in Miami on Monday when his voice cracked. Beside him, on a split screen, an image of Hurricane Milton whorled, giant, angry and red.
The storm had just made the leap to a Category 5 monster that was churning toward Florida’s storm-battered west coast, much of it still in splinters after being struck by Hurricane Helene on Sept. 26.
“It’s just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane,” Mr. Morales said of Milton, closing his eyes and slightly shaking his head. “It has dropped. …”
His voice faltered. He looked down, drew a shaky breath and continued, “… it has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours.” For viewers who didn’t understand the staggering implications of this barometric plunge, Mr. Morales’s choked delivery said enough. “I apologize,” he said in a quavering voice. “This is just horrific.”
Mr. Morales shared the broadcast on X, writing that he had debated whether to do so. Its post has since been viewed 1.7 million times.
In an interview on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Morales said a number of factors had played into his tearful broadcast. Shock about the storm’s rapid intensification. Angst about the increasing number and the severity of extreme weather events. Frustration over society’s failure to mitigate the pollution that is heating the planet, despite scientific certainty that it is driving increasingly violent weather. And empathy for the people, the ecosystems and the creatures that would experience Hurricane Milton’s destructiveness.
“It claims lives,” Mr. Morales said. “It also wrecks lives. You have to feel sorry for the folks that are in this hurricane’s path.”
The broadcast also underscored a recent shift in Mr. Morales’s four-decades-long career as a meteorologist. He has gone from striving to be a “non-alarmist” weathercaster to one who freely admits to being horrified by the mounting threats of global warming.
Since the post became a social media sensation, Mr. Morales said, he has received especially strong support from younger people on TikTok.
“They almost feel represented to a degree,” said Mr. Morales, who is 62. “They see this angst and emotion, and this is what Gen Z and Gen Alpha is feeling. They’re feeling anxious about the changing climate. Well, so am I.”
Mr. Morales began his meteorology career in 1984, working for the National Weather Service and then for Univision and Telemundo, before joining NBC6 in Miami as chief meteorologist in 2009. He was among about 100 television meteorologists who were convened for briefings about climate change in 1997 during the Clinton administration, a meeting that Mr. Morales said had inspired him “to try to find a way to communicate the impending threat.” He started weaving in more mentions of the impact of climate change into his weather forecasts.
Still, Mr. Morales said he had long prided himself for being a calm voice of reason who was confident he could deliver information that would help people to stay out of harm’s way. That changed in recent years, as the intensity and the ferocity of storms grew at rates that were once unimaginable.
“But as the temperature of the planet increases, my confidence in forecasting storm intensity is decreasing,” he wrote in a 2023 essay for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “Today I am no longer as comfortable in 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.”
Meteorologists are among the most trusted voices in journalism, yet reporting on extreme weather caused by global warming has put some in the cross hairs of those who don’t accept climate science. Last year, Chris Gloninger left his job as chief meteorologist of KCCI in Des Moines, Iowa, after his broadcasts about climate change resulted in a death threat. Discussions of climate science are especially fraught in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a law in May deleting the term “climate change” from state statutes.
Mr. Morales said while he had never faced a death threat, the pushback he received had exploded in recent years, especially on X. In an essay published on Sept. 30 on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, he wrote that after warning that Hurricane Helene would prove catastrophic, he was called a “climate militant,” and his predictions were deemed “an exaggeration.”
“But it wasn’t an exaggeration,” he wrote.
“Perhaps those who have known me as the just-the-facts non-alarmist meteorologist can’t get used to the new me. That’s why they bicker and accuse me over overhyping emerging weather threats. But no one can hide from the truth.”
Yet, he said, people he has run into at grocery stores or post offices around South Florida have thanked him for his guidance on hurricanes, and for being, until somewhat recently, one of the few people on television in Miami talking about climate change.
“We’re just stating what’s out there, what’s coming and we’re seeing it unfold before our very eyes,” he said. “The climate crisis is here. It’s not a future problem, it’s a today problem, and it merits all of our attention.”
The growing cadre of meteorologists in Florida talking about climate change includes Jeff Berardelli of WFLA-TV in Tampa Bay and Steve MacLaughlin of NBC6 South Florida, who delivered a withering on-air assessment of the state’s “don’t say climate change” law and urged people to do their research and vote. “There are candidates that believe in climate change and that there are solutions, and there are candidates that don’t,” Mr. MacLaughlin said.
Mr. Morales said he had choked up during a broadcast just once before, while doing a Facebook livestream on the eve of Hurricane Maria’s landfall in Puerto Rico, where he was raised.
“Many, many people have reached out to me to say that if they hadn’t watched that, they would have not properly prepared,” Mr. Morales wrote in a text message. “They’ve thanked me for ‘saving their lives.’ Whether that’s embellishment or not, it’s been extremely heartening.”
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