Miami Meteorologist Gets Emotional Talking About Hurricane Milton, Climate Change

Miami meteorologist John Morales struggled to fight back tears on Monday as he informed viewers that Hurricane Milton had intensified to a Category 5 storm.

“It’s just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane,” he said on NBC Miami, choking on his words as he described the storm’s catastrophic drop in pressure over a 10-hour period. “I apologize. This is just — horrific.”

As the storm churned over record-hot waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton grew from a Category 1 to Category 5 hurricane in just 18 hours — a phenomenon known as “rapid intensification” that scientists say is becoming increasingly common due to climate change.

“It is just gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico, where you can imagine the seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot,” Morales said on the air. “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.”

Fossil-fuel-driven climate change is causing the world’s oceans to rapidly warm. Warm water acts as jet fuel for tropical storms, allowing them to quickly gain strength.

In a subsequent post on X (formerly Twitter), Morales said he debated whether to share a video of his emotional update about the hurricane.

“I did apologize on the air,” he wrote. “But I invite you to read my introspection on @BulletinAtomic of how extreme weather driven by global warming has changed me. Frankly, YOU should be shaken too, and demand #ClimateActionNow.”

Morales need not apologize, however, for providing unfiltered warnings about the devastating consequences of the world’s inaction on climate change — a drum he’s been pounding for years.

Hurricane Milton’s rapid growth on Monday left climatologists and meteorologists around the country stunned. On social media, many said the storm’s development, which surpassed even the worst forecasts, left them with “no words.”

“Rapid intensification” occurs when a cyclone’s maximum sustained winds increase at least 35 mph in a 24-hour period. Milton’s maximum sustained winds exploded from 100 mph to 175 mph — a 75 mph increase — in roughly nine hours.

As of Monday afternoon, Milton was spinning just north of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. It is forecast to make landfall near Tampa, Florida, as at least a major Category 3 hurricane on Wednesday.

The powerful storm takes aim at Florida as much of the state and the U.S. Southeast is still reeling from the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene last week — a storm that scientists concluded was supercharged by human-caused climate change.

In his post about Helene in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last week, Morales described the hurricane as a “harbinger of the future” and detailed how climate change has caused him to change how he communicates the risk of storms.

“Today as a result of so many compounding climate-driven factors, the warming world has forcibly shifted my manner from calm concern to agitated dismay,” he wrote. “Now I look at storms differently. And I communicate differently. I don’t need to be told ‘you’ve changed’ to know that I’m not the same. 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 [of] overhyping emerging weather threats.”

“But no one can hide from the truth,” he added. “Extreme weather events, including hurricanes, are becoming more extreme. I must communicate the growing threats from the climate crisis come hell or high water — pun intended.”