When the weather starts stirring in the tropics, TV stations in Florida know that people viewers will be turning in.

Years ago, one South Florida station asked their Meteorologists to also show the viewing area as a possible point of landfall. The thought was it would keep viewers tuning in.

It appears that WTVJ (Miami) Chief Meteorologist John Morales believes that the storms currently forming in the Atlantic are way too far away to worry about just yet.

And he’s right.

But, it also appears that station management figures that bumping Morales up to the top of the newscast to talk about the storms will help drive ratings.

Morales was told he would lead the late newscast but took to Twitter to try and calm viewers a bit and tell them it wasn’t his idea to make storms far off the lead story.

“I’m just following orders,” he said in his tweet:

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South Florida is being ravaged by the coronavirus, thousands of people are unemployed and hungry and this NBC O&O thinks now is a good time to scare the people with tropical storms that are way too far off to know where they will head.

Because it’s about ratings and screw the mental health of the viewers.

Props to Morales for calling out his station and trying to calm the viewers a bit.

Shame on the management at this NBC station.