Bizarre Falsehoods About Hurricanes Helene and Milton Disrupt Recovery Efforts

Experts warn that weather-related disinformation can rapidly escalate into real-world risks and distract from aid.

Wildly improbable conspiracy theories about Hurricanes Helene and Milton have spread largely unchecked on social media. The storms were engineered to clear the way for lithium mining. They were sent to help the Democrats in next month’s election. They were formed by weather-controlling lasers.

The claims persist despite attempts by scientists and government officials to debunk them with evidence. They survive all calls to reason.

The falsehoods, which have been circulating on X, TikTok, YouTube and other platforms, can resemble the conspiracy theories that plague modern American politics. Prominent figures are pushing them, citing unrelated, misleading or outdated evidence.

But the risks are often more immediate. Online climate-related conspiracy theories can quickly cause damage offline, disrupting emergency communications and recovery efforts. Officials have said this week that the disinformation about Hurricanes Helene and Milton was making relief workers a target, and the American Red Cross warned that the outlandish claims could prevent survivors from seeking help.

“If they’re telling you that the government is responsible for the disaster, that doesn’t help you at all in getting ready for it,” said Jose E. Ramirez-Marquez, an associate professor of systems engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology and a co-author of a journal article this month on how hurricane-related information traveled through X.

The increasing frequency and devastating power of major storms, heat waves, wildfires and other weather-related catastrophes tend to elicit an especially strong emotional response, allowing climate denialists, lobbyists for the oil and gas industry and rumormongers to exploit people’s concern and confusion.

“It helps them to regain some measure of control and sense of order at a time when everything feels quite bleak and hopeless,” said Jennie King, who oversees climate disinformation research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that studies online platforms.

The intensity of Helene and Milton’s one-two punch has been difficult to fathom. For many, it has been easier to blame human villains.

On TikTok, millions of users were exposed to conspiracy theories about the storms, according to research from the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America. There were claims that Helene was the product of a man-made land grab to enable lithium mining in North Carolina, though the hurricane also plowed through several other states. Climate scientists have said there is no way for humans to manufacture hurricanes.

Other false narratives spread in ad-supported YouTube videos with tens of thousands of views and in X posts with millions of views, voiced by public figures including a Christian nationalist podcaster, a former Trump administration official and a Republican congresswoman. They said the hurricanes were the result of government efforts to disrupt voting by steering the storm toward Republican districts; sound waves and microwave weapons; or greed-fueled plots benefiting investment firms like BlackRock. (Scientists debunked such claims, saying that humans cannot modify the path of a storm and that no technology exists that can create hurricanes.)

Many of the narratives contained strains of conspiracy theories floated during earlier natural disasters. Peddlers of climate disinformation are opportunistic, experts said, often recycling claims and blasting them into the information ecosystem during times of crisis until they catch the public’s attention and take off. Since late September, when Helene made landfall, the number of articles and social media posts that mentioned both hurricanes alongside terms such as “geoengineered,” “manipulated” and “weather weapons” has ballooned, according to data cited by Newsguard, a group that tracks misinformation.

Pyrra Technologies, a company that monitors fringe social media, found that false story lines introduced during Helene about the Federal Emergency Management Agency were being repurposed for Milton on platforms associated with the far right. Common disinformation tactics, such as misrepresenting old footage, were also deployed: Some accounts shared a video of a woman being thrown out of a Texas bar in 2023 and falsely claimed that it showed a more recent assault against a FEMA official.

Matt Huggins, a 35-year-old police officer in Marion, N.C., spent several days with FEMA crews last week, touring the floodwaters in a tiny boat looking for anyone who needed help. When he went online afterward, he encountered conspiracy theories criticizing FEMA agents as part of a secretive government plot.

“They aren’t mining for lithium,” he wrote in an emotional Facebook post. “They’re running their bodies into the ground to search for and help people they don’t know.”

The recent hurricanes have been accompanied by a swell of antisemitism and threats directed at those managing the emergency response, but hateful rhetoric and the risk of violence is not the only reason climate-related disinformation can be dangerous. Rumors about natural disasters that start in digital forums can influence real-world choices about evacuation, financial aid and searches for missing loved ones.

An additional layer of risk pervades the most recent cycle of disinformation, experts said, as false narratives about the dual hurricanes dovetail with and fuel existing conspiracy theories about sinister plots to derail the upcoming election.

When conspiracies “erode people’s trust in institutions and the whole idea of government coordination, then suddenly people either ignore or actively refute the instructions that they’re being given,” said Ms. King of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “There has just been this complete breakdown in those channels of communication.”

The disinformation around Helene and Milton has become so overwhelming that even public officials linked to other conspiracy theories — such as election denial — are trying to beat back rumors and underscore the severity of the storms.

Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee who has supported former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of voting fraud, said in a statement last week that “there’s been a bunch of misinformation on the internet surrounding relief efforts in my state, and I felt it was my duty to weigh in due to the seriousness of the situation.”

Mr. Trump, however, has made several false claims about disaster-relief funds and Democrats’ support for hurricane recovery efforts. On Wednesday, President Biden accused his predecessor of undermining confidence in rescue and rebuilding work, saying he contributed to the “reckless, irresponsible and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies.”

More on Hurricane Milton

• What It Was Like as the Eye Came Ashore: Our reporter’s account of a harrowing night in Sarasota, Fla. — different from anything she has experienced as a native of New England.
• Over 3 Million Without Power: Downed power lines and scattered debris caused widespread power outages in Florida that may prove difficult for utility companies to repair.
• Would His Houseboat Survive?: A man’s boat had survived several storms the last three years. But after Milton swept through, he wasn’t sure he would have a home to return to.
• A Crane Collapse: By the time a construction crane crashed onto the building that houses The Tampa Bay Times, journalists had already evacuated, fanning out across the region to cover the storm.
• Mental Health Harms of Back-to-Back Storms: Research shows that experiencing repeated disasters makes people more vulnerable to mental health issues, and prolongs the time it takes to recover.