No one at the National Weather Service is at risk of losing their jobs in connection to last week’s controversy over Hurricane Dorian’s chances of hitting Alabama, according to the top official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
During a speech Tuesday, NOAA acting Director Neil Jacobs disputed a report by the New York Times that said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross threatened to fire top officials at the NOAA if they did not crack down on forecasters who contradicted President Trump’s warning over Labor Day weekend that Dorian could slam Alabama.
“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.
This followed a spokesperson for Commerce Department, which oversees NOAA, telling the Washington Examiner the Times report was “false.”
With Dorian churning toward the Bahamas on Sept. 1, 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. In fact Dorian swung up the East Coast, making landfall over North Carolina, before speeding off to eastern Canada as a hurricane-force post-tropical cyclone.
A week-long controversy ensued, amplified by Trump lashing out at the media for negative coverage and his presentation in the Oval Office of a National Hurricane Center map of Dorian’s projected path doctored with a sharpie to show an extension of the forecast cone reaching over the Florida panhandle and over a part of Alabama.
The Times report said Ross phoned Jacobs from Greece on Friday, instructing him to quash the appearance of conflict between NWS and Trump. After Jacobs rejected the demand, Ross warned political staff would be fired if they did not negate the contradiction. NOAA, which is 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.”
The NOAA leader spoke at the National Weather Association conference one day after NWS Director Louis Uccellini praised the station in Birmingham at the same event. “They were correct in clarifying that the threat was very low,” he said. Birmingham office staffers were asked to stand up, and they received a standing ovation from hundreds of their forecasting colleagues.
Jacobs also voiced support for the staff at the Birmingham office while explaining the intent of the NOAA statement.
“I have the utmost respect for what you do because I understand how difficult numerical weather prediction is, and how even more complicated conveying risk to the public is. The purpose of the NOAA statement was to clarify the technical aspects of the potential impacts of Dorian,” Jacobs said. “What it did not say, however, is that we understand and fully support the good intent of the Birmingham weather office, which was to calm fears and support public safety.”
Earlier forecasts considered Alabama to be 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%.
Jacobs stressed that the forecast changed drastically over the span of a couple days.
“At one point Alabama was in the mix, as was the rest of the Southeast,” Jacobs said during his speech. “At one point the Gulf states were at greater risk than the Atlantic coast.”
The inspector general of the Commerce Department is reportedly investigating NOAA’s statement and is asking agency officials to preserve files. With concerns rising about the president’s influence over NOAA, an email to staff on Sunday announced the agency’s chief scientist is investigating possible policy and ethics violations. In his message, Craig McLean said NOAA’s news release was “political” and a “danger to public health and safety.”
Jacobs said the controversy has been “hard” for him and the people close to him. “I want to thank everyone who has known me and supported me. I’m the same Neil I was last Thursday,” he said.
