A Florida meteorologist and hurricane specialist became emotional on air while reporting on Hurricane Milton’s monstrous growth over the last day.
Storm expert John Morales had to briefly pause in the middle of an NBC broadcast while discussing the storm raging over Yucatan, Mexico, and other states along the Gulf of Mexico.
“It’s just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane. It has dropped,” he said on air as his voice choked.
“It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours. I apologize. This is just horrific.”
Morales went on to describe the unseasonably hot temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which has been fueling Hurricane Milton and boosted Hurricane Helene just last week.
“Maximum sustained winds are 160 mph. And it is just gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico where the winds — I mean, the seas, are just so incredibly, incredibly hot. Record hot, as you might imagine,” Morales said.
“You know what’s driving that. I don’t need to tell you: Global warming, climate change [are] leading to this and becoming an increasing threat for the Yucatan, including Merida and Progreso and other areas there.”
Just last week, Morales published a piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists detailing how Hurricane Helene’s growth and destruction wasn’t just a fluke but a “harbinger of the future” — a future now just days away.
“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,” Morales wrote in the article.
“That’s why they bicker and accuse me of overhyping emerging weather threats. But no one can hide from the truth.”
Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall in the Tampa Bay area on Wednesday or Thursday. It will head northeast, cutting through Florida before exiting into the Atlantic Ocean.
It’s expected to be the second-strongest hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast in history.
