Internal NOAA emails detail blowback to Trump attacks on hurricane weather forecasters: “This has really gotten out of hand”
By Allan Smith
7 November 2019
(NBC News) – Internal emails at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released Thursday showed how the agency scrambled to respond to President Donald Trump’s inaccurate claims about Hurricane Dorian and Alabama.
The emails, dozens of which were obtained by NBC News in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, also detailed the blowback the NOAA received from both inside and outside the agency over a statement it put out bolstering Trump’s claims over prior information from its own forecasters.
“These are getting very personal,” Benjamin Friedman, the NOAA’s deputy undersecretary for operations, emailed to two colleagues in response to an angry message he received in light of the agency’s 6 September 2019 statement.
The emails, which spanned a week in early September, took place as the president made and defended claims that Hurricane Dorian was likely to hit Alabama on Sept. 1 “(much) harder than anticipated,” contradicting forecasts that day, which showed the storm’s path not to be near Alabama.
The kerfuffle over those remarks lasted more than a week, well after the storm devastated the Bahamas and caused major damage in the Carolinas. At that time of Trump’s tweet, the southeastern corner of Alabama stood at a minuscule risk of receiving tropical storm force winds in excess of 39 miles per hour. But the state was not in the National Hurricane Center’s projected path for the storm or its “cone of uncertainty,” which by that point showed the hurricane moving up the East Coast.
After Trump’s initial tweet, which he repeated throughout the day, the National Weather Service’s Birmingham staff tweeted: “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian” because the storm “will remain too far east.” A NWS spokeswoman told staff that the scientists who sent the tweet were unaware of the Trump tweet. […]
Days later, Trump displayed an apparently doctored map in the Oval Office that showed Alabama — circled in black marker that looked to be from a Sharpie — to be within Dorian’s path.
“This has really gotten out of hand,” Chris Darden, the top forecaster in the NWS Birmingham office, wrote to NOAA officials after receiving another round of press inquiries following one of Trump’s tweets on the hurricane maps. “One of my forecasters just messaged me and said CNN is contacting him on his personal twitter asking for comment.” […]
Asked by one official how to handle questions on Trump’s doctored hurricane map, Chris Vaccaro, a top press official at the agency, suggested saying: “I’m focused on the upcoming impacts from Dorian on the Carolinas and mid-Atlantic.”
On the day of Trump’s initial tweet and later remarks, Vaccaro responded to a media request by simply stating: “The current forecast path of Dorian does not include Alabama.”
Following a flood of media questioning later in the week, Friedman emailed staff, “This is a difficult time.”
“I know that political leadership is discussing next steps,” he added.
Officials detailed “angry/hate mail and phone calls” regarding the controversial NOAA statement — detailing that some had to “turn off their cell phones due to the large volume of calls.”
Not every response detailed in the email trove was negative, though. Forecasters in Bexar County, Texas sent the Birmingham officials a $50 Pizza Hut gift card following the NOAA statement disavowing their tweet.
“You’re probably having a rough day. Just a little something to show we support & appreciate you. Please enjoy! – Your Supporters,” the Texas forecasters wrote. [more]
Internal NOAA emails detail blowback to Trump hurricane claims: ‘This has really gotten out of hand’
