President Trump’s Sharpie-Gate Storm Path Prediction Rages On, Pitting Weather Services Against Each Other

Bruce Haring

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What does the Lynyrd Skynyrd song Sweet Home Alabama and Hurricane Dorian have in common? Both “miss ‘ole’ ‘bamy once again.”

Before this week, those were the most famous Alabama misses. Then along came President Trump, who made a now-famous call on Hurricane Dorian’s potential storm path, wherein he warned the major storm could hit Alabama, and then used what suspiciously looked like a Sharpie-enhanced series of maps to buttress his point.

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Today, the debate on storm paths, Sharpies and reality continued as a Category 5, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defending President Trump by taking on the Birmingham National Weather Service’s prior claims on the storm.

A NOAA spokesperson issued a statement Friday that Trump’s storm path claims were an accurate reflection of its analysis on Hurricane Dorian’s potential path. The National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama previously said that the state would not see any impact from the storm.

NOAA said today that the National Weather Service “spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.”

Trump was also defended today by Fox Business Network pundit Lou Dobbs, who echoed Sean Hannity’s remarks from Thursday that Trump was right in his storm watch.

“The national left-wing media went apoplectic over the past few days,” Dobbs said. He put up a clip from CNN on Twitter that noted the cable network itself had said that the storm potentially could have hit Alabama, and noted how other media had jumped up and down to complain about Trump’s accuracy.

“It’s not exactly a mere loss of the sense of proportion on the part of the left wing fake news media,” Dobbs said. “This is madness, what we have witnessed over the last few days.”

Dobbs mentioned today’s NOAA statement and concluded, “you mess with a bull, you get the horn.”

 

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