The top official at the National Weather Service broke ranks and praised the Birmingham office for accurately forecasting Hurricane Dorian in the face of President Trump inaccurately warning Alabama could get hit hard by the storm.
Days after the release of an unsigned statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of the National Weather Service, rebuking the Birmingham office, NWS Director Louis Uccellini said the weather station acted appropriately in combating what they thought were “rumors” on Sept. 1 about Dorian.
“The Birmingham office did this to stop public panic, the ensure public safety, the same goal as all the National Weather Service offices were working toward at that time,” Uccellini said Monday at a National Weather Association conference in Huntsville, Alabama.
Over Labor Day weekend, Trump tweeted that Alabama, as well as other southeast states, “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.” Within 20 minutes, the National Weather Service station in Birmingham tweeted “Alabama will NOT see any impacts” from Dorian because it was projected to remain too far east by that point in time. Earlier forecasts considered Alabama as being in its projected path, but a National Hurricane Center graphic shows the odds of low-end tropical storm-force winds associated with Dorian striking Alabama dropping significantly by Sunday to roughly 5%.
Uccellini insisted the Birmingham office had no idea Trump was the source of concerned calls about Dorian and that it used “strong language” to ensure the state and local communities that there was “no threat.”
“They did that with one thing in mind: Public safety,” Uccellini said. “And they responded not knowing where this information was coming from. Only later, when the retweets and politically based comments came into their office did they learn the source of this information. Nevertheless, they were correct in clarifying that the threat was very low.”
Birmingham office staff were asked to stand up and received a standing ovation from hundreds of their forecasting colleagues.
The storm of controversy swirled last week as Trump repeatedly lashed out at the negative media coverage he received for his outdated forecast. The backlash intensified on Wednesday when Trump presented in the Oval Office a National Hurricane Center map of Dorian’s projected path from Aug. 29 and people noticed that added to the graphic was a black semicircle next to the forecast cone that reached over the Florida panhandle and a part of Alabama.
As outrage grew in the forecasting world, NOAA released a statement on Friday siding with Trump. “The Birmingham National Weather Service’s Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time,” an unnamed NOAA representative said.
The Washington Post reported that NOAA also issued an internal memo instructing staff not to contradict Trump about his Dorian forecast.
With concerns rising about the president’s influence over the top weather agency, an email to staff on Sunday announced NOAA’s chief scientist is investigating whether there has been a violation of agency policies and ethics. In his message, Craig McLean said NOAA’s news release was “political” and a “danger to public health and safety.”
