According to federal law, “Whoever knowingly issues or publishes any counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather conditions falsely representing such forecast or warning to have been issued or published by the Weather Bureau, United States Signal Service, or other branch of the Government service, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ninety days, or both.” According to its website, it makes forecasts “for the protection of life and property and enhancement of the national economy.”Īnd as part of that role, Congress passed a law that makes it illegal to pass along a false forecast as an official Weather Service project. The National Weather Service has been part of the Commerce Department since the 1940s, when it was known as the U.S. It’s a federal crime to provide false weather forecasts, but Trump enjoys protections as president. Two days before Trump’s first tweet mentioning a supposed threat to Alabama, it was clear - both from the models and the forecasts - that Dorian would turn north and northeastward either over Florida or before it reached Florida, meaning Alabama and the rest of the Gulf Coast would be spared. Experienced forecasters blend these models with other data and their own skills to produce the most accurate forecast. No weather forecaster would take the output of a single computer model - or even multiple models - and portray it as a weather forecast. But computer models aren’t forecasts they’re tools for forecasters. Some of those models did suggest the center of Dorian could move through the Florida peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico, where it could make a second landfall along the Northern Gulf Coast, including Alabama. 28, features many deterministic computer models plotting potential tracks for the center of Dorian. The image, which according to a time stamp was generated on Aug. Defending himself late Wednesday, Trump posted an image borrowed from the South Florida Water Management District.
Just because the National Hurricane Center forecast never predicted any significant impact on Alabama from Dorian doesn’t mean it was impossible. Longer-term computer guidance did suggest, for a time, that Dorian could enter the Gulf of Mexico. That chance quickly diminished to 0 percent. The greatest odds for any site in Alabama to receive winds of tropical storm intensity was 11 percent, in a forecast issued on Aug. The only probabilistic measure of an impact on Alabama ever issued by the National Hurricane Center was a product that predicts the chance of tropical storm-force winds of 39 miles per hour or greater occurring in a five-day period. But no part of Alabama was ever in the forecast cone, which is accurate 60 percent or 70 percent of the time five days in advance. Pressed by reporters about it on Wednesday, Trump insisted, at one point last week, there was a “95 percent” chance of Dorian impacting Alabama.
Trump shows an apparently altered map showing Hurricane Dorian impacting Alabama In fact, the National Hurricane Center cautions that four or five days out, tropical systems will remain in the cone only 60 percent or 70 percent of the time.
Hurricanes - the most powerful synoptic scale systems in weather - are unpredictable. The “cone of uncertainty” included most of Florida, excluding the panhandle west of the “Big Bend” area, and a little bit of southeastern Georgia.įive days is as far out as the National Hurricane Center will go. The map Trump showed off in the White House on Wednesday - the unaltered version, at least - was a five-day forecast from the National Hurricane Center issued at 11 a.m. So what’s the real story? Here are five things to know about Dorian, Trump, Alabama and the rest of the Southeastern U.S.: The National Hurricane Center never predicted Dorian would affect Alabama. But rather than acknowledge his mistake - or that, at best, he was providing information based on days-old forecasts that had long been superseded by better guidance - Trump has dug in on his claim that Alabama was in the path of Dorian, until it turned northward toward the Carolinas.
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