Enlarge / President Donald Trump displaying a doctored forecast map at the White House on September 4, 2019, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla )
For meteorologists and senior leaders at NOAA, the first week of September 2019 is one they're never going to forget.
Amidst the tumult of Hurricane Dorian and its threat to the United States, President Trump injected himself into the story by warning that several states, including Alabama, would "most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated. Looking like one of the largest hurricanes ever." Alabama faced virtually no risk from the storm at the time. After being ridiculed for this errant forecast, the president responded with a White House event where he displayed an official National Hurricane Forecast map with a Sharpie-drawn extension that included Alabama in Dorian's "cone of uncertainty."
The controversy only burned all the brighter when the Birmingham office of the National Weather Service tweeted that Alabama residents had nothing to fear from Dorian (which was accurate). This tweet occurred after the president's tweet about Alabama's risk but was apparently not directly in response to the president. Instead, it came in response to a surge of public inquiries. According to the meteorologist-in-charge of the Alabama office, Chris Darden, his office's phones "started ringing off the hook" with public inquiries and concern after the president took to Twitter.
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