Don't Mess With the Weather People
In Monday’s forecast, we see a low chance of the National Weather Service soothing President Donald Trump’s ego over his Hurricane Dorian flub and a high chance of Trump continuing to bitch about it in the days to follow.
National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini commended Birmingham, AL, forecasters at a meeting of the National Weather Association on Monday, saying the forecasters “did what any office would do to protect the public” last week as Hurricane Dorian approached the East Coast, according to the Associated Press.
On Sept. 1, Birmingham’s National Weather Service Twitter account alerted followers that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impact from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama.” The tweet came as a corrective just 20 minutes after Trump tweeted that Georgia and Alabama would “most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by the hurricane.
However, Uccellini said at Monday’s meeting that the Birmingham forecasters didn’t know Trump had been behind the report of Dorian heading for Alabama when they had tweeted out the alert. He also said the forecasters used “an emphasis they deemed essential to shut down what they thought were rumors.”
“They did that with one thing in mind: public safety,” Uccellini said, which lead to a resounding standing ovation, the AP reported. “Only later, when the retweets and politically based comments started coming to their office, did they learn the sources of this information.”
In the days since Trump’s forecast flub, he’s tried to hit back at the National Weather Service fighting his own misinformation by doctoring the path of Hurricane Dorian on a week-old graphic from the National Hurricane Center with a Sharpie. At first, Trump said he didn’t know anything about the map, but as it turned out, he apparently drew a tumor on the hurricane’s path himself.
He’s continued to prove his ignorance with other tweets, but even with the mixed support of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which criticized Birmingham’s forecasters last week, Trump can’t seem to win. Nonetheless, we’re likely but hours away from another Trump tweet, this time criticizing Uccellini for commending forecasters for stopping madness in its tracks.