The order to disavow a National Weather Service tweet contradicting President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian could hit Alabama came from the White House.
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney instructed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to take action because he believed NWS forecasters in Birmingham went too far by saying the storm had no chance of impacting Alabama, according to the New York Times.
The controversy began on Sept. 1 when Trump tweeted that Alabama and other southeastern states “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.” Twenty minutes later, the National Weather Service station in Birmingham appeared to issue a corrective tweet that said “Alabama will NOT see any impacts” from Dorian because it was projected by that time to remain too far east.
A report from the Washington Post said Mulvaney made a call to Ross after Trump complained about the issue and told staff to correct the NWS Birmingham tweet.
The Times previously reported that Ross called Neil Jacobs, the acting director of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, on Friday and threatened to fire top political staff in the scientific agency that his department oversees if they did not crack down on forecasters who contradicted Trump’s warning to Alabama.
NOAA, the parent agency of NWS, released an unsigned statement later that day that condemned the Birmingham office for speaking in “absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.”
Trump told reporters in the White House on Wednesday did not issue the order to NOAA to issue a statement. “No, I never did that,” the president said. “I never did that. It’s a hoax by the media. That’s just fake news, right from the beginning, it was a fake story.”
A representative for Commerce Department told the Washington Examiner the Times report about Ross threatening NOAA was “false.”
Jacobs also disputed the report during a speech on Tuesday.
“There is no pressure to change the way you communicate forecast risk into the future. No one’s job is under threat: not mine, not yours. The Weather Service team has my full support and the support of the department,” Jacobs told a crowd of forecasters at a conference in Huntsville, Alabama.
Multiple investigations, including by the Commerce Department inspector general and Congress, are now underway examining possible violations of policy and ethics.
