Meteorologists battle flood of misinformation as they report on Milton

"Several meteorologists and climate scientists told The Washington Post that they have spent decades warning about how climate change will lead to extreme weather events such as Milton. But the struggle to disseminate information in a fractured media environment has been worsened by an aggressive flood of misinformation, they say.

“This is by far the worst misinformation [for a] weather event I’ve ever seen in my career,” said Katie Nickolaou, a meteorologist with CBS affiliate WLNS in Lansing, Mich. “Because of Helene, you have so many people who now want to pretend to be experts or people who, as I put it, cosplay as meteorologists.”

Nickolaou said social media has become a hostile environment for scientists. On the meteorologist’s Facebook page Tuesday, a user “recommended murdering people to stop these hurricanes” — which Nickolaou understood as a reference to the conspiracy theory that the government or meteorologists are controlling hurricanes."