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Heartbroken weatherman stops mid-report to explain on live TV why he 'can't' forecast anymore

"We may be flying blind" from now on.

NBC6 & Canva Photos

John Morales stopped his report to educate viewers on what budget cuts really mean.

I hardly ever watch the news on television, especially not for the weather. It's just so much easier to pick up my phone and check Google or The Weather Channel. I just want to know how warm it's going to be or how likely it is to rain. These days, I can find that out in about 10 seconds and go about my day.

But when there's potential danger—hurricanes, storms that might knock out the power of topple over trees, tornado warnings, or threats of ice and snow—my trusty local meteorologist or weatherman is always there. All of that said, I've never once considered that I might not be able to get my weather forecast from either source, at least not accurately. It's 2025—our weather modeling should be better than ever, state of the art, right?

John Morales, a meteorologist and hurricane specialist with NBC6 in South Florida, was reporting on an upcoming storm when he suddenly shifted gears, right in the middle of the broadcast.

weatherman, weather, meteorologist, news, tv news, news anchor, viral videos, trump, doge, governmentWithout good data, we can't accurately predict the paths of hurricanes. Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Morales explains that in his 34 years of presenting the weather, he's always been able to confidently tell his viewers when a hurricane might hit, or when it might turn away. He's always been able to stand behind his data, modeling, and forecast in order to help protect the people of South Florida.

"I am here to tell you that I am not sure I can do that this year."

Why? "Because of the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science in general."

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Morales then pulled up a graphic instead of his usual weather map. It laid out some stark realities about severe understaffing of the National Weather Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Between brutal layoffs, employees accepting the recent DOGE buyout, and straight-up resignations, the agencies responsible for collecting weather data have lost hundreds and hundreds of valuable experts.

He also explained that due to federal government budget cuts, there's been a sizeable decrease in weather balloon launches across the country. Weather balloons are instruments that take crucial measurements of the upper atmosphere and send data that helps with forecasting. With less data available, and lower quality data, Morales say that "the quality of forecasts is becoming degraded."

That's a pretty scary thought, especially in a place like South Florida. What do you do when your local meteorologist can't predict what a powerful hurricane will do next?

"This is a multi-generational impact on science in this country," Morales warns.

Watch his passionate plea here:

Almost nine million people viewed the powerful clip on X. It was reshared over 26,000 times. Morales' message is definitely getting the attention it deserves.

It's not just the National Weather Service that's bleeding. In the name of efficiency, The White House has slashed budgets at the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and more. Trimming the federal budget sounds well and good until you realize that we won't be making any major cancer breakthroughs any time soon without funding the research. And we won't be able to protect people from hurricanes and tornadoes without complete weather data.

(And yes, even the Weather app on your iPhone needs a database to pull from.)

Meanwhile, we're spending $1 trillion—yes, trillion— per year on our military. This is the anti-science, anti-expert sentiment Morales is talking about. It's been building for years and is just now coming to a head in the worst way.

We still need meteorologists and weather experts like Morales. We still need scientists.

weatherman, weather, meteorologist, news, tv news, news anchor, viral videos, trump, doge, governmentWe still need human scientists and experts that can compile and read maps like this one. Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

ChatGPT can pull weather data from Google and tell you if there's going to be a thunderstorm, but can it tell you when the data behind that forecast is incomplete or unreliable? That's the reality we're facing right now, and we might not know the forecast isn't reliable until it's too late in some cases.

TV weathermen who live in our communities and can put crucial context behind the weather and help keep us safe still matter. Not only that, but they are ambassadors for science, and they still have a big platform in many communities around the country. Morales is making sure he makes the most of his.

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The 'world's slowest experiment,' going for nearly 100 years, is still endlessly fascinating

It takes nearly a decade for one drop of this liquid to fall.

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John Mainstone was the custodian of the Pitch Drop Experiment for 52 years.

Because we use water all the time, most of us have an intuitive sense of how long it takes a drop of water to form and fall. More viscous liquids, like oil or shampoo or honey, drop more slowly depending on how thick they are, which can vary depending on concentration, temperature and more. If you've ever tried pouring molasses, you know why it's used as a metaphor for something moving very slowly, but we can easily see a drop of any of those liquids form and fall in a matter of seconds.

But what about the most viscous substance in the world? How long does it take to form a falling drop? A few minutes? An hour? A day?

How about somewhere between 7 and 13 years?

pitch drop experiment, tar pitch, solid or liquid, physics, world's longest experimentPitch moves so slowly it can't be seen to be moving with the naked eye until it prepares to drop. Battery for size reference.John Mainstone/University of Queensland

The Pitch Drop Experiment began in 1927 with a scientist who had a hunch. Thomas Parnell, a physicist at the University of Queensland in Australia, believed that tar pitch, which appears to be a solid and shatters like glass when hit with a hammer at room temperature, is actually a liquid. So he set up an experiment that would become the longest-running—and the world's slowest—experiment on Earth to test his hypothesis.

Parnell poured molten pitch it into a funnel shaped container, then let it settle and cool for three years. That was just to get the experiment set up so it could begin. Then he opened a hole at the bottom of the funnel to see how long it would take for the pitch to ooze through it, form a droplet, and drop from its source.

It took eight years for the first drop to fall. Nine years for the second. Those were the only two drops Parnell was alive for before he passed away in 1948.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

In total, there have been nine pitch drops in the University of Queensland experiment. The first seven drops fell between 7 and 9 years apart, but when air conditioning was added to the building after the seventh drop, the amount of time between drops increased significantly. The drops in 2000 and 2014 happened approximately 13 years after the preceding one. (The funnel is set up as a demonstration with no special environmental controls, so the seasons and conditions of the building can easily affect the flow of the pitch.)

The next drop is anticipated to fall sometime in the 2020s.

pitch drop experiment, tar pitch, solid or liquid, physics, world's longest experimentThe first seven drops fell around 8 years apart. Then the building got air conditioning and the intervals changed to around 13 years.RicHard-59

Though Parnell proved his hypothesis well before the first drop even fell, the experiment continued to help scientists study and measure the viscosity of tar pitch. The thickest liquid substance in the world, pitch is estimated to be 2 million times more viscous than honey and 20 billion times the viscosity of water. No wonder it takes so ridiculously long to drop.

One of the most interesting parts of the Pitch Drop Experiment is that in the no one has ever actually witnessed one of the drops falling at the Queensland site. The drops, ironically, happen rather quickly when they do finally happen, and every time there was some odd circumstance that kept anyone from seeing them take place.

The Queensland pitch drop funnel is no longer the only one in existence, however. In 2013, Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, managed to capture its own pitch drop on camera. You can see how it looks as if nothing is happening right up until the final seconds when it falls.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Today, however, with the internet and modern technology, it's likely that many people will be able to witness the next drop when it happens. The University of Queensland has set up a livestream of the Pitch Drop Experiment, which you can access here, though watching the pitch move more slowly than the naked eye can detect is about as exciting as watching paint dry.

But one day, within a matter of seconds, it will drop, hopefully with some amount of predictability as to the approximate day at least. How many people are going to be watching a livestream for years, waiting for it to happen?

PoorJohn Mainstone was the custodian of the experiment for 52 years, from 1961 to 2013. Sadly, he never got to witness any of the five drops that took place during his tenure. Neither did Parnell himself with the two that took place while he was alive.

John Mainstone, pitch drop experiment, university of queensland, physicsJohn Mainstone, the second custodian of the Pitch Drop Experiment, with the funnel in 1990.John Mainstone, University of Queensland

Sometimes science is looks like an explosive chemical reaction and sometimes it's a long game of waiting and observing at the speed of nature. And when it comes to pitch dripping through a funnel, the speed of nature is about as slow as it gets.


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William Shatner describes the incredible pain he felt when he finally went into orbit

He had a profound experience of the "overview effect."

"William Shatner" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

William Shatner's trip to space wasn't what he expected.

Statistically speaking, the number of humans who have traveled into space is insignificant. But the experience of leaving our home planet and venturing into the great beyond is incredibly significant for the individuals who have actually done it. One of those fortunate humans is actor William Shatner, who spent three years pretending to hurtle through space in his iconic role as Captain James T. Kirk on the original Star Trek series. As captain of the USS Enterprise, Captain Kirk was dedicated to exploring "strange new worlds," seeking out "new life and new civilizations," and boldly going "where no man has gone before."

Naturally, Shatner has spent a lot of time pondering what it would be like to actually experience leaving Earth, and when he took the opportunity to join Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin trip to space in October 2021 at age 90, he was able to compare how his expectations met up with reality. Shatner shared an excerpt from his new book with Variety, and it reveals that his initial reaction to being in space was surprisingly dark.


jeff bezos, blur origin, 2019, william shatner, space, astronauts, amazonJeff Bezos unveils Blue Origin's prototype lunar lander in 2019.via Daniel Oberhaus/Wikimedia Commons

"I love the mystery of the universe," Shatner wrote. "I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years…"

However, as he looked out the window of the spacecraft—a real one, not a screen on a film set—and looked in the direction opposite Earth, "there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold," he wrote. "All I saw was death. I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing."

As he turned back toward "the light of home," he saw the opposite. "I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her."

Then he had a stunning revelation: "Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong."



Again, this is a man who has spent much of his life thinking about space—not as an astronaut or astronomer or astrophysicist, but as a human being stuck on the Earth's surface, struck with wonder about what's out there. He explained what he had been wrong about:

"I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film 'Contact,' when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, 'They should’ve sent a poet.' I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

"It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral."

Shatner explained how this "sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner" for many astronauts when they view Earth from orbit. It's part of the "overview effect"—the profound shift in perspective that comes with seeing our collective home from a distance. With no visible borders between nations or peoples, it becomes clear that our divisions are all manmade, which can change the way we view humanity as a whole.


The experience left Shatner with renewed conviction to focus on what we share in common.

"It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement," he wrote, "and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware—not only of our insignificance, but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance."

Upon returning to Earth, Bezos offered Shatner champagne, but he turned down the offer because he needed a moment to collect his thoughts on what he had just experienced. He told Jimmy Fallon onThe Tonight Show that the trip gave him a moment to reflect on his life. "What's equally important is caring, loving, the planet is going to be inundated, unless we do something about it," he told Fallon. "All the deep things that we should be thinking about, every so often, we need to be reminded. And that moonshot, that did it to me."

- YouTubeyoutu.be


Just beautiful. Since most of us will never leave Earth, we can take inspiration from those who have, acknowledge our essential oneness and do everything in our power to protect our beautiful, life-giving home.

Shatner shares more of his reflections on life on this planet and beyond in his most recent book, "Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder."

This article originally appeared two years ago.

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Carl Sagan once easily debunked flat Earthers with just a piece of cardboard

The science doesn't lie.

Image via YouTube

Carl Sagan on 'Cosmos'

Over the past few years, there has been a growing number of people who believe the Earth is flat. A 2019 YouGov survey of more than 8,000 Americans found that as many as one in six are "not entirely certain the world is round."

Flat Earth Theory has, surprisingly, gained a lot of traction. A 2021 study published in the National Library of Medicine posited that the theory is buoyed by "the cognitive tendency to interpret, favor, and recall information in order to strengthen one's personal beliefs" or, in other words, confirmation bias. Though the "how" and "why" of Flat Earth Theory and its popularity is fascinating (and troubling, to be honest), the scientifically proven truth is that the Earth is round. It is a globe. It is spherical.

Of course, the knowledge that the Earth is round is not new. Ancient Greek philosophers across centuries studied and found evidence that the Earth is indeed round thousands of years ago. Way back in the 6th century BC, Pythagoras first proposed the Earth was round from observing the shape of the Moon. In the 5th century, Empedocles and Anaxagoras noticed evidence of the Earth's true shape by observing its curved shadow during lunar eclipses. In the 4th century, Aristotle argued the Earth was round after noting how ships disappear "hull-first" over the horizon line. In the 3rd century, Eratosthenes actually calculated the Earth's circumference using geometry and shadows with shocking accuracy.

earth, globe, sphere, flat earth, skeptics, scienceWe've got the whole (round) world in our hands. Image via Canva

Naysayers remain skeptical, and there's probably no changing their minds, but to this day, experts insist the Earth is round and back it up with cold, hard science. NASA posted this video just days ago. Watch:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com


Here's where Carl Sagan comes in.

Sagan hosted the original version of TV's Cosmos: A Personal Journey in 1980-81. According to PBS, Cosmos would become "one of the highest-rated programs in the history of public television" largely due to Sagan's ability for "reinterpreting intricate scientific jargon into elegant and memorable statements that the common person can easily conceptualize and appreciate." The show would be revived in 2014 with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at the helm.

In the first episode of Cosmos, Sagan easily proved the Earth was a sphere using a piece of cardboard, some sticks, and the work of none other than the ancient Libyan-Greek scholar, Eratosthenes. Watch:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

"How could it be, that at the same moment, a stick in Syene would cast no shadow and a stick in Alexandria, 800 km to the north, would cast a very definite shadow?" Sagan asked. "The only answer was that the surface of the Earth is curved," he concluded. "Not only that, but the greater the curvature, the bigger the difference in the length of the shadows."

Considering the distance between the two cities and the lengths of the shadows they produced, Eratosthenes was able to determine that the Earth had a seven-degree curve. He used that calculation to speculate the Earth was 25,000 miles in circumference.

These days, we know that the earth is 24,901 miles in circumference, which means Eratosthenes was less than 100 miles off. Didn't we say his accuracy was shocking? Not bad for over 2,000 years ago.


This article originally appeared five years ago.

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