WILMINGTON — Rumors swirling in the wake of recent hurricanes, some of which have led to threats toward meteorologists and disaster relief workers in western North Carolina, have also been picked up by a local candidate.
READ MORE: Fact check: NHCS candidate forum gets heated over Covid-19, student accountability
Republican Natosha Tew has reposted a tweet from United States Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) claiming the federal government controls the weather.
The tweet states: “Yes they can control the weather. Here is Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan talking about it. Anyone who says they don’t, or makes fun of this, is lying to you. By the way, the people know it and hate all of you who try to cover it up.”
Tew’s response: “YES!!! And then ask yourself why are the RED parts of swing states being targeted?”
Tew, a candidate for the New Hanover County School Board and founder of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, is one of many spreading misinformation online. Greene’s tweet has 34,000 shares on X.
Port City Daily reached out to Tew to ask for an interview and links to her sources on weather control. The second request, a follow-up response to Tew on another email thread, went unanswered even as a question on the unrelated topic was read and responded to.
Claims that the government controls the weather has been denied by President Joe Biden and have been debunked by several experts.
National Weather Service Public Affairs released this statement to PCD on the rumors but would not take an interview:
“Hurricanes Helene and Milton, like all hurricanes, formed on their own due to the right conditions of sea surface temperature and upper atmospheric winds. There is no technology that humans have that can either create, destroy, modify, intensify or steer hurricanes in any way, shape or form.”
UNCW professor and researcher Yalei You, who has worked with NASA on its Global Precipitation Measurement mission, spoke Tuesday on the matter. You said he didn’t take the rumors seriously until his students started bringing them to class; upon further research, he said there is a kernel of truth in the weather control narrative.
“For 10 years or 15 years, the government, indeed, spent a lot of money trying to modify a hurricane specifically,” You said.
However, it largely failed.
From 1962 to 1983, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration embarked on the ambitious Project STORMFURY; it aimed to artificially stimulate convection outside a hurricane’s eye wall through cloud seeding with silver iodide.
Cloud seeding, which began in the 1940s to alleviate agricultural drought, is the process of introducing tiny substances into subfreezing clouds to help water droplets form ice crystals, which then grow and fall as precipitation.
STORMFURY scientists argued the artificially invigorated convection would “compete with the convection in the original eye wall, lead to reformation of the eye wall at larger radius, and thus produce a decrease in the max-imum wind.”
The technique was tested on four hurricanes in the 1960s. Researchers reported seeing a 10% to 30% decrease in wind speeds on some days, but the results have come into question.
“One of the key reasons why STORMFURY fails is because we find that in hurricanes, there is just not enough super cool liquid water,” You said. “So even if we put a lot of the silver iodide into it, put a lot of ‘seed’ into it, there is not so much super cool water to make this seed grow.”
Researchers reviewing the project determined the positive results probably stemmed from an inability to discriminate between the expected effect of human intervention and the natural behavior of hurricanes.
Then the research turned its focus on better understanding hurricanes and global weather patterns. In one example, NASA — though funded by Congress, is an independent agency — launched a joint space mission in 1997 with Japan to monitor and study tropical rainfall and energy release. The eight years of data gathered by the project, which You worked on, was used by NOAA, the National Center for Environmental Prediction, and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
What was learned, You said, was that cloud seeding to control major weather systems is dependent on the ability to control cloud size and there is no technology to do so yet.
“Right now we cannot do it, but in the far future, even if we can modify the cloud particle size, the challenge will be where and how can we change the path?” You said, noting the question brings up many legal and ethical concerns.
In recent years, there have been limited examples of successful cloud seeding to prime precipitation to fall. These instances are commonly pointed out as evidence the government is controlling or modifying the weather, but these projects are completed by private organizations on a local scale.
The governmental connection? These companies must file a “weather modification project report” with NOAA prior to the action. In another tweet, Rep. Greene uses this requirement of the Weather Modification Act of 1972 as proof of governmental weather control.
However, NOAA is only an information-collector, rather than a direct actor in these modifications. Many of the recently filed reports are for “rain enhancement” in the Southwest.
One report covers an operation by the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District from April to September. It states PGCD utilizes a twin-engine aircraft to enhance rainfall in a little over seven counties in the north Texas Panhandle. Clouds are injected with glaciogenic and hygroscopic flares under the supervision of a meteorologist and National Weather Service Radar.
Another report from California documents Santa Barbara County’s attempts to increase inflow to Twitchell Reservoir. The document states three remote-operated seeding flare sites are launched to target the Twitchell Reservoir watershed area. Each seeding flare contains approximately 20 grams of silver iodide. This process is also overseen by certified meteorologists.
As far as the rumors go, You said they can be harmful but they have personally pushed him to work harder on effective communication.
“I actually think part of our responsibility, too, is that we should better communicate with the public to educate — well, I shouldn’t say, educate, it sounds too arrogant — we should relay the message to you, to the public to say ‘this is not the case,’” You said. “We cannot do it. We hope we can do it. We have the ambition to do it, but we don’t right now.”
The misinformation spreading has led to meteorologists being threatened, as reported by New York Times Monday, as well as Federal Emergency Management Agency workers. Social media has been rife with posts claiming FEMA is, among a few rumors, confiscating donations and preventing people from removing debris from their homes.
On Tuesday, an armed Rutherford County man was arrested for threatening FEMA workers in his area. FEMA changed some of its operations over the weekend as a safety precaution.
Tew has shared her experience on X regarding the federal agency. In a recent tweet, she said she spent four days in western North Carolina aiding recovery but saw “ZERO federal boots on the ground” and “minimal state assets.”
She also posted a response to a reporter for WECT who asked Tew for an interview regarding her tweet on the government controlling weather. Tew tweeted she was responding to being called a “lunatic” for questioning why the most conservative parts of several swing states were “left unassisted by federal government FOR DAYS” despite Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic forecasts. She also claimed FEMA did not pre-position any disaster recovery efforts nearby.
There have also been claims the federal agency does not have enough money to give survivors because it has been diverted to illegal immigrants.
This has been spread by Republican New Hanover County commissioner candidate John Hinnant, who shared tweets criticizing the federal agency, including one that says FEMA stands for “Funneling Emergency Money to Aliens.”
FEMA has launched a webpage dedicated to quashing rumors and Director Deanne Criswell delivers daily press briefings on the agency’s work in the state.
FEMA has more than 1,000 workers in the state helping with the disaster and has doled out more than $96 million in FEMA Individual Assistance to Western North Carolina survivors, according to Gov. Roy Cooper.
The governor’s office released Monday that more than 160,000 people have registered for assistance, with roughly 4,600 households sheltered in hotels through FEMA’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance.
Cooper said people continue working around the clock to assist.
“We know that significant misinformation online contributes to threats against response workers on the ground, and the safety of responders must be a priority,” he said in a release. “At my direction, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety is helping partners like FEMA to coordinate with law enforcement to ensure their safety and security as they continue their important work.”
Reach journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com
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