The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a statement late Friday backing President Trump’s assertion that initial forecasts showed Hurricane Dorian affecting Alabama—and disavowing the local weather service’s assertion that the state would not be impacted. “From Wednesday, August 28, through Monday, September 2, the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama,” read the statement, from an unnamed NOAA spokesperson.
The NOAA claimed last Sunday’s tweet from the Birmingham National Weather Service stressing that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from Dorian” was inaccurate. The tweet “spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time,” the NOAA said. The statement comes as Trump continues to demand an apology from the “fake news media” for reporting that while he claimed the hurricane would affect Alabama, weather forecasters said that was not true. On the same day Trump made that claim, the National Hurricane Center was predicting Dorian would affect parts of Florida, with storm surge possible in Georgia, and South and North Carolina.
