Was Hurricane Milton “engineered”? That was the term used by the BBC as social media (X, TikTok) was swamped with claims that the US government had manipulated the storm by virtue of its ability to control the weather.
No less than President Biden stepped in to dismiss these claims, describing them as “beyond ridiculous” and “stupid”.
But many sought to substantiate their claims pointing to cloud seeding which involves manipulating clouds to produce more rain. Others pointed to “geoengineering”, but as the BBC report noted, “No tools would allow humans to create or control storms like this one”.
The point being that hurricanes are natural weather systems beginning in low pressure areas where thunderstorms and clouds develop. Winds push these away from Africa towards the Americas, warm moist air rises from the tropical Atlantic Ocean and the clouds and winds begin to spin.
This could strengthen into a full hurricane but to attribute it to some sinister government conspiracy would be far fetched. But there is a view that climate change could be increasing the number of tropical storms.
Hurricanes also intensify very quickly, in the case of Milton the speed increased from 150 km an hour to 280 km. This was also the case with Hurricane Helene, which intensified rapidly over the Gulf of Mexico and hit Florida. But the cause was determined to be human activity generated climate change leading to high surface temperatures.
The warmer the temperature the larger the moisture content in the air, so rainfall can be more intense. Global warming has also seen water levels rising across global seas. It means storm surges will lead to the flooding of low lying coastal areas.
So the social media posts about storms being engineered is only so much hoopla. There is a scientific explanation to what is happening, nothing is being “engineered”.
