New York Times: Commerce secretary threatened to fire top NOAA employees if they didn't disavow Alabama tweet

John Farley

John Farley

Supporter
Joined
Apr 1, 2004
Messages
1,895
Location
Pagosa Springs, CO
For the record, several models DID show Dorian crossing Florida and hitting the Gulf coast including Alabama. This was also noted as a possibility before and after the President's "board" by TWC.
 
What Warren said is true - up to a certain point in time. But the reason I posted the article was because it points to a politicization of the NWS, which IMHO is never a good thing no matter who does it. Also, there was talk by politicians about Dorian potentially hitting Alabama long after there was any chance of that happening. Let's leave weather forecasting to the meteorologists.
 
Kind of thought it was blown way out of proportion by the media. Donald Trump is from TV, any news is good news to him... So you would think the news would stop overreacting to every small little thing like this. Sad to see the weather community suffer the consequences of their political fight.
 
Screenshot_20190904-214036~2.png
This was the the day BEFORE the tweet.

Screenshot_20190907-205858~3.png
This was the tweet, that suggested end of times for Alabama.

Screenshot_20190907-205858~4.png
This is the response trying to calm people down from such a tweet.

Better not see anyone bashing someone's forecast a week out claiming another May 3 1999 is on the way, based off the responses here.
 
Warren Faidley said:
For the record, several models DID show Dorian crossing Florida and hitting the Gulf coast including Alabama.
Click to expand...

But the NHC forecast certainly did not on Sunday when the President said it was looking WORSE for Alabama. And are we to really believe that the White House terrorism expert briefed the President using 4-day old ENSEMBLE maps?

Jacob Parrish said:
Sad to see the weather community suffer the consequences of their political fight.
Click to expand...

Actually the weather community was hurt by his statement, and then his followup lies. You cannot have the President overruling the NWS when it comes to forecasts. You cannot have NOAA putting out an unsigned press release (which follows a blanket NWS email) telling offices that if the President tweets out about a hurricane hitting Michigan they have to remain quiet. It's a bad precedent.

TJKLECKNER said:
View attachment 19433
Click to expand...

Good find TJ - even the National Guard stopped talking about Alabama being hit before Sunday.

Anyone in the weather enterprise should be TERRIFIED about the President making fake weather forecasts, lying about it, and then having his people threaten the National Weather Service for putting out the correct info.
 
Warren Faidley said:
Remember, this story comes from the New York Times, one of the most inaccurate sources for news in America.
Click to expand...

Actually no - the Wall Street Journal has been covering it. And the NOAA Press Release which had a direct lie and threatened the Birmingham WFO was posted on NOAA"s website. So at some point it's kind of clear that it has nothing to do with the newspaper reporter.
 
It amazes me how anyone can see 2 sides to this story. Donald specifically said on Sunday 9/1 that Alabama was going to be hit hard. That was incorrect. No models or forecasts at that point showed this. Once corrected by the Birmingham NWS and confronted that he was incorrect, rather than admit he made an error or correct his statement, he CHANGED his story to trying to say, "well at one point Alabama was going to get hit and see here are all these old maps and models and tweets from the Alabama Nat'l Guard from several days earlier that shows I'm right". Then he made his Sharpie map.🤣🤣 It's like people somehow don't comprehend how DIFFERENT those two things are. Who cares if spaghetti plots from when Dorian was first forming showed Alabama maybe getting hit! I don't look at the GFS from 4 days ago to try and make a chase target when I'm chasing. How can someone use that defense for this guy?

I'm not sure if he somehow didn't have current information(scary if he didn't) or just didn't understand where the storm was going(also kind of scary), but then of course bc nothing is never "normal" with this guy, we get stories on directives being issued to the weather agencies to only agree with the King or risk being fired. Disgusting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Yellowstone floods reveal need to fix forecasting flaws in warming world, experts say
Replies
1
Views
1K
Mike Smith
Back
Top