Tag: hurricane

In Maine, a Republican candidate for the legislature is promoting weather conspiracies

Devastation in Ashville, N.C. Photo (cc) 2024 by Bill McMannis.

Conspiracy theories about the weather have come to Maine. Wendy Lee MacDowell of Augusta, a Republican candidate for the state legislature, has claimed on social media that the government is responsible for “weaponized weather” aimed at whipping up storms in conservative states, reports Dylan Tusinski of the Morning Sentinel, which covers Central Maine.

“Reached for comment,” Tusinski writes, “MacDowell refused to provide information backing up her claims and threatened to sue a reporter for requesting an interview.”

MacDowell, who is running against state Rep. Bill Bridgeo, an incumbent Democrat, is echoing claims made by extreme-right Republicans such as U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who posted to Twitter recently: “Yes, they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

“They,” presumably, is a reference to Democrats, although there is more than a whiff of antisemitism to these lies, too. For instance, MacDowell linked on Facebook without comment to a video on Twitter, which in turn had been reposted from TikTok, claiming that Hurricane Helene was directed by the government to Asheville, North Carolina, as part of an elaborate conspiracy to take control of lithium mines tied to Doug Emhoff, who’s married to Vice President Kamala Harris.

In the comments, another conspiracy theorist claimed that Emhoff’s family owns a pharmaceutical company “that makes/sells…. the puberty blockers they are pushing on children to change genders.”

And, of course, we all know that Emhoff is Jewish.

The extreme right’s conspiracy theories about hurricanes have resulted in meteorologists coming under attack and have impeded relief efforts, reports Ivana Saric of Axios, writing:

Meteorologist James Spann told Axios on Friday he began seeing an influx of threatening messages and conspiracy theories around the onset of Hurricane Helene. The threats include messages like “‘stop lying about the government controlling the weather — or else,'” he said. Spann also noted that the harassment faced by young women in the field is even greater.

The last word goes to Nicholas Jacobs, a political scientist at Colby College, who tells the Morning Sentinel: “Believing in conspiracy theories is kind of like a giant middle finger to all the groups in society that say they know what truth is.”

Did the media overhype Irene? (II)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceQiNQuZ6gg&w=500&h=345]
In retrospect, the biggest problem with Howard Kurtz’s rant about the media’s overhyping Irene was that he was way too early. When I linked to him on Sunday afternoon, the storm clearly seemed to have fizzled — and the main question at the time was whether the media should have been more restrained, or if we were dealing with a genuinely threatening situation that just happened not to pan out. Then came the floods.

Yesterday, New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter and I appeared on “The Emily Rooney Show” on WGBH Radio (89.7 FM) to discuss whether the media were guilty of overkill. Essentially we were in agreement: the non-stop coverage was too much and often silly; the fact that Irene veered away from Washington and New York City initially made it seem like the storm had been oversold; but given the devastation in Vermont, Upstate New York, Western Massachusetts and parts of New Hampshire, it turned out that the storm hadn’t be overhyped at all. (It was a great kick to share the stage for a moment with Stelter, whom I hugely admire. Here is his Monday story on the Weather Channel.)

The last word goes to Charles Apple (via Martin Langeveld), who mocks the hype theory with images of the reality on the ground. Irene was a major storm that will affect the region for months to come. It was, in some respects, every bit as bad as the predictions — just different.

Video above is from Brattleboro Community Television.

A North Shore view of Irene

Fallen branch by the side of Route 127 in Beverly. Click on image for more photos.

Even though we weren’t hit hard by Tropical Storm Irene on the North Shore, I thought it would be fun to drive around and take some pictures this afternoon. Nothing too dramatic. I started in Danvers and made my way to Beverly, Manchester-by-the-Sea and Magnolia before heading home.

The ocean off the coast in Manchester and Magnolia was by far the most visually interesting. Just slightly inland there was little wind. But by the shore it was still strong, as seagulls literally flew in place against the air currents.

I shot some video, too, but since it wasn’t as good as this, I decided not to post it.

Looking back at the Hurricane of 1938

My grandfather Elmer Shaw in Onset. Click on image for more photos.

In late September 1938, an enormously destructive storm hit most of the northeastern United States. The Hurricane of 1938 resulted in 564 deaths and more than 1,700 injuries.

The hurricane has also been a matter of family legend. The Shaws, my mother’s side of the family, owned a cottage on the water — “Shawnee” — along East Boulevard in Onset, part of Wareham. I spent many happy summer days there in the 1960s and early ’70s. And I was always told that my grandfather Elmer Shaw had done such a good job of building the cottage that it was the only one along East Boulevard to survive the hurricane.

Here’s how the Boston Globe of Sept. 22 described the impact of the hurricane on Wareham:

Without lights and almost completely inundated in many sections, the town remained on the verge of isolation. No trains arrived and it was utterly impossible to enter the town through the main street.

All stores in the business district were completely under water. The warehouse of the Tremont Nail Company was 10 feet under water.

I seem to recall family members saying that the hurricane came with no warning. If that’s the case, then perhaps they weren’t paying attention. Though the cable-news saturation of 2011 was unimaginable back then, the Globe ran several stories as the storm drew closer, among them “Hurricane Moving Toward the Bahamas” (Sept. 19) and “Hurricane May Spare Florida” (Sept. 20).

Still, if the Globe’s online archives are complete, then the next time the word “hurricane” popped up was on Sept. 22, after the storm had swept through. But people did listen to the radio in the 1930s, and it’s hard to imagine that storm updates weren’t part of news reports.

Recently my cousin Sue discovered a trove of family pictures, including some of Onset and of the Hurricane of 1938. I thought you might enjoy having a look.