Under High Pressure, Weather Agency Defends Trump On Dorian

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

President Donald Trump has been fixated all week on his false claim made Sunday that Alabama “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by Hurricane Dorian, a statement which wasn’t supported by the evidence at the time. Through a whirlwind of lies, distortions, and even potentially criminal forgeries, Trump has tried to beat back the criticism he received for the gaffe, a campaign that peaked Friday when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration criticized a Birmingham branch of the agency for a tweet that contradicted the president.

Shortly after Trump tweeted falsely about Alabama on Sunday, the National Weather Service (a branch of NOAA) in Birmingham tweeted:

Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east. #alwx

— NWS Birmingham (@NWSBirmingham) September 1, 2019

Now, in a statement, NOAA disavowed the tweet:

NOAA releases a Friday evening, unattributed statement disavowing the NWS Birmingham tweet from Sunday saying Dorian wasn’t going to impact Alabama. pic.twitter.com/4OfuM6iESo

— Allan Smith (@akarl_smith) September 6, 2019

There are several things to note about this new development. First, it comes on the heels of Trump apparently forcing a Homeland Security official to come to his defense, even though his claims didn’t support the president’s initial or subsequent falsehoods. Second, this new statement is particularly dubious given that no administration official was willing to put their name on it. Third, it doesn’t address Trump’s myriad false claims about Hurricane Dorian, including his first claim on Sunday which created a completely false impression about the risks Alabama faced.

Now, as I have noted multiple times, there were a few indications around the time of Trump’s false claim that a relatively small portion of Alabama had a small chance of experiencing strong winds because of the hurricane. (Trump has also shifted ground on what claim he is defending because on Thursday, he asserted that his belief had been that “Alabama may also be grazed or hit” by the storm. He had previously said there had been a “95 percent” chance of the storm hitting the state.) One projection said there was a 5 percent chance of a tiny part of the state feeling 39+ mph winds.

So it’s possible that the NWS tweet somewhat overstated the confidence that there would not be “any” impacts in Alabama, though many dispute the idea that there was anything wrong with the statement. Nevertheless, Trump’s claim was still unequivocally wrong, which he hasn’t admitted; he said that the chances the state would get hit hard had dramatically increased when they were diminishing down to zero. In fact, state officials were so unconcerned about the impact of the storm on Sunday that Alabama’s governor wasn’t on a conference call at FEMA, as the Washington Post reported: