How could hurricane misinformation affect the US election?

Alex Jones, the longtime conspiracy theorist liable for millions for defaming school shooting victims, started a broadcast this week with one of his favorite topics: weather manipulation.

“All right, I did a lot of research and a lot of preparation the last 30 years for what I’m going to be covering today,” he said. “Coming up, I’m going to do a big presentation for everybody on what’s really going on with weather weapons.”

Amid two hurricanes – one of which hit two swing states – formerly fringe characters like Jones contributed to a swirl of conspiracy theories, many becoming uncomfortably mainstream. The weather was being controlled, some of the theories went, to prevent Republicans from voting and fend off a Trump victory.

The misinformation since Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina and Georgia and Milton hit Florida offers a test run for how election day could go – and it’s not looking good.

Social media sites like X, Facebook and TikTok all gave a platform to hurricane truthers and politicians who saw an opening to spread doubt and distrust of government. That distrust in some cases then led to threats and harassment against aid workers, meteorologists and government officials.

The hurricanes hit at a crucial time in the US election calendar – about a month out from November’s presidential contest. Because Helene hit two swing states, turnout could be affected by the storm’s devastation and affected states are considering rule changes to accommodate people who may not have transportation or identification. Those changes will become fodder for allegations that the election will be rigged.

“This is the singularity of rumoring: procedure change, powerful people, aid money, location changes, swing states,” said Danielle Lee Tomson, the election rumor research manager at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. “My bingo card is filled up.”

Already, many on the right, encouraged by Donald Trump, have claimed Democrats are trying to steal the election through a variety of means, none of which are proven.

“Add a hurricane to that, and you have a compounded and highly opportunistic situation to jump in and create rumors or narratives or frame certain events for political gain,” Tomson said.

Voters in hurricane zones are likely uncertain after losing their documents, being displaced from their homes, and losing access to reliable transportation. That uncertainty creates a vacuum where rumors can grow, and people with incentives to capitalize on the uncertainty can step in and advance their political goals.

They can – as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has – double down on the weather manipulation claims. They can – as Donald Trump has – falsely claim federal disaster funds have run out because it instead went toward migrants.

“There are a lot of good reasons to critique aspects of Fema from an emergency management perspective,” said Sarah DeYoung, a professor at the University of Delaware who studies disaster response. “But critiquing the way the system unfolds according to the National Response Framework is a little bit different than blatantly false information about funding being diverted to support illegal immigrants instead of hurricane victims.”

In North Carolina, the board of elections made changes to increase accessibility for people affected by the hurricane, allowing increased use of absentee ballots and dropoff options. The Trump campaign had requested improvements for access in Hurricane-ravaged areas, many of which disproportionately hold Republican voters. Still, the move immediately drew skepticism from the right.

“I don’t know if I love or hate these late changes in the election law,” Fox host Jesse Watters said in a broadcast. “But I know Marc Elias, the Democrat election lawyer who specializes in shenanigans, loves it, so that makes me a little suspicious.”

The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website, contributed to the doubt cast on the rule changes, headlining its story: “Here We Go: North Carolina Officials Change Election Rules in Hurricane-Devastated Counties that Mostly Voted for Trump, Fueling Republican Election Integrity Concerns.”

The conspiracies about the hurricanes racked up massive views on social media. In one video shared on X of clouds, a woman claims “they’re chemtrailing the fricking crap out of us”. It got nearly 8m impressions. Another post encouraged people in Florida to ignore evacuation orders, claiming a plot was afoot to prevent Floridians from returning to their homes after the storm. “This looks a lot like a J6-style trap to invoke an insurrection and declare martial law to cancel the election,” wrote the account @healthranger, which has 245,000 followers on X.

Chuck Edwards, a Republican representative from North Carolina, put out a lengthy release debunking a series of rumors about Fema, search-and-rescue efforts and weather manipulation. Fema’s response has had “shortfalls”, he said, but “nobody can control the weather”.

“I encourage you to remember that everything you see on Facebook, X, or any other social media platform is not always fact,” he wrote. “Please make sure you are fact-checking what you read online with a reputable source.”

DeYoung, who is originally from western North Carolina, is in a lot of local disaster recovery groups on Facebook as part of her research. One of the groups, which has more than 7,000 members, was sharing information about supplies and relief areas. After a few days, it changed its cover page to say Fema was funneling money to illegal immigrants.

“That’s just an example of some of the challenges we’re facing, because it’s become hyper-partisan, which actually gets in the way of people receiving accurate information about relief, supplies, response,” she said.

Abbie Richards, a video producer at Media Matters for America who studied climate change conspiracies on TikTok for her master’s thesis, found a host of videos on the platform that alleged Fema was confiscating resources, blocking roads or stealing donations – all false claims the agency has confronted in Helene’s aftermath.

“They’re seeing this misinformation, they’re believing it, and they feel like Fema is against them,” she said. “I’ve seen people call for civil war, and then I’ve seen explicit calls to unalive Fema personnel, or saying that Fema personnel can be arrested or shot or hanged on the spot.”

Election conspiracies are baked into a lot of these videos, such as the idea that Democrats are controlling the weather or the government isn’t responding at the level it should because the areas affected are Republican-led, she said.The spread of misinformation and ties to the election don’t bode well for how lies or rumors will unfold on election day and afterward, she said.

“The infrastructure for communication via social media has grown more complicated in the last four years,” Richards said. “More people are online. More people know how to make videos. More have their phones out, recording every moment. But that just adds to the sheer volume of it, and it’s quite clear that the social media platforms are not prepared.”

Rightwing figures are using these storms not only to sow doubt, but to rally the troops against the people they allege are trying to prevent them from voting for Trump.

Mike Flynn, the short-lived national security adviser under Trump who is now a far-right figure with 1.7 million followers on X, laid out the crises facing the nation: hurricanes, fires, overseas wars, censorship, “fake and real declared pandemics”, “stolen elections”.

“The globalists are pulling out all the stops,” he wrote on X. “Don’t worry, we have them right where we want them, and oh yeah, the real storm is coming. @realDonaldTrump and the tens of millions of Americans who will #MAGA.”