Man Involved In Famous Hurricane "Sharpiegate" Kerfuffle Is Nominated To Lead NOAA

Neil Jacobs, who was unfortunately
involved in the 2019 "Sharpiegate"
scandal has been nominated to lead NOAA

 When somebody takes a leadership role at a science-based organization, you kinda want them to have some scientific integrity. 

But of course, the Trump administration seems to do everything opposed to integrity. Which, of course, is the reason President Donald Trump has hired Neil Jacobs to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

By the way, there's more really bad Trump-related NOAA news I'll have posts on in the near future, Stuff is coming fast and furiously under this administration. 

Any, back to Jacobs. He is probably best known for his role in the Great "Sharpiegate" Scandal of 2019.

Jacobs was acting director of NOAA during Trump's first term when Category 5 Hurricane Dorian threatened Florida. 

At the time, Trump said the storm also threatened the Florida Panhandle and Alabama, which actually wasn't true. 

In at attempt to avoid public panic in Alabama, meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Alabama dared to contradict Trump, accurately saying Hurricane Dorian was not headed toward that state and everybody there was safe from that dangerous storm. 

We know how much Trump has to be always right, or something like that, so Trump was steamed at those accurate scientists at NWS Birmingham. 

So to "prove" those wascally meteorologists wrong, Trump used a "cone of uncertainty" map that was crudely altered with a Sharpie to include Alabama as a threatened spot.

The cone of uncertainty maps show a range of locations in which a hurricane threatens. Alabama was outside the National Hurricane Center's cone of uncertainty, meaning residents there faced no threat. But the addition of the Sharpie image - viola! - made Alabama "threatened" to Trump's satisfaction. 

As the Washington Post reports:

"The confusion prompted an unusual and unsigned NOAA statement in support of Trump's warnings to Alabama. An investigation found undue political influence in the process of crafting that statement, in violation of NOAA's standards for scientific integrity, but Jacobs defended the statement and admonished the Birmingham meteorologists."

NOAA's scientific integrity policy prohibits political interference with the conduct and communication of the agency's scientific findings.  Jacobs' contradiction of science-based hurricane forecasting violated that policy. 

The famous Sharpitegate photo. Click on image to make
it bigger and easier to see. Trump administration added
a Sharpie line to falsely make it look like Alabama
was threatened by Hurricane Dorian. It wasn't. 

Of course with Trump in office, ethics is out the window, so NOAA's scientific integrity policy is now probably a worthless piece of paper. 

In the new Trump administration, we've already seen his pressure to contradict science on weather and climate change and that will only increase. Which puts us all in danger. 

If Trump decides a storm or other weather danger is inconvenient to his agenda, then he and probably Jacobs will minimize or even lie about the threat. 

It appears "Sharpiegate" was not Jacob's idea. In fact, the Washington Post reported at the time Jacobs initially tried to discourage issuing the false statement that Trump was correct about the hurricane and the meteorologists in Birmingham were wrong. 

In the end, Jacobs caved to pressure from Trump and then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who was Jacob's boss.

Given his apparent loyalty to Trump, Jacobs would follow any whim from the president, up to including rooting any climate science from NOAA's mission. That would gut the agency since climate change is such an important issue regarding anything weather related. 

Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the Trump administration, called for breaking up NOAA, eliminating references to climate change and privatizing the National Weather Service. I imagine Jacobs might go along with that, too. 

I suppose if you did enough, there are some good things to say about Jacobs. As the Washington Post notes, he did emphasize the importance of improving United States weather forecasting models, which have lagged behind forecasting models in other nations. 

Jacobs will need Senate confirmation, but since the Senate is approving people who actually might be national security risks to head important agencies, somebody like Jacobs, who is a serious scientist but one who kowtows to Trump's whims, should have no trouble being approved.

 

Tension Between Politicians And Meteorologists Boils Over Again, This Time In Maine

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, shown here repairing
a neighbor's driveway after July's floods,
seems to work well with the National 
Weather Service when coordinating storm
emergencies. responses. However,
politicians sometimes use the NWS as
scapegoats when an emergency response
doesn't go as well as hoped. 

 "It came without warning," is the usual phrase we often hear after a weather disaster. Be it a tornado, wind storm, or flood, somebody will blame a meteorologist for not telling them danger was coming.

It's true that sometimes meteorologists, who are only human practicing an inexact science, indeed get it wrong. But often, the perception is at odds with the facts.  

So it was in Maine last week. 

The flood we experienced here in Vermont on December 18-19 was bad enough. In New Hampshire and Maine, it was even worse than what we experienced in the Green Mountain State. This was likely the second worst flood in Maine history. Only a 1987 flood was worse.

Which brings us to a tiff between Maine Gov. Janet Mills and the National Weather Service.

As the Bangor Daily News reports:

"'The National Weather Service did not predict five or six inches of rain in any community in Maine,' said Governor Mills Wednesday, speaking at a press conference after touring flood damage in Kennebec County."

But au contraire!

The National Weather Service in Maine rebuffed the governor. The storm was "well-forecasted and communicated in advance, including the potential for rainfall totals of 4-6 inches with localized areas receiving higher amounts," says the NWS.

The NWS noted that it provided forecasts and briefings to local and state officials starting on December 15, more than two full days before the disaster struck. 

"In advance for the hazards that were likely to occur on Monday, December 18, NWS forecasters informed local and state officials in the days leading up to the storm through daily email briefing packages, direct phone  conversation and virtual city and statewide briefings."

The NWS continued in their statement:

"The first flood watch and high wind watch were issued on Saturday afternoon, two full days before the storm. The state of Maine hosts a coordination call Sunday afternoon with NWS forecast offices in Gray and Caribou briefing on the expected flood, wind and coastal flood impacts. Rain began on Sunday bight, and by Monday morning NWS offices had issue flood warnings."

As you can see, the National Weather Service keeps all their receipts. There are many good reasons for this: Those receipts can clear up misinformation regarding their forecasts. 

This really came in handy back in 2019, when then-president Trump said Hurricane Dorian was going to hit Alabama. A National Weather Service office in Alabama refuted Trump's claim. When they got annoying blowback (including through the infamous hurricane Sharpie map) from Trump and his MAGA minions, the National Weather Service was able to prove how their Dorian forecasts evolved. The NWS showed how and why they reassured Alabamans that the storm would be no threat to them. 

There's another important reason for all those NWS receipts after a severe weather event.  If their storm predictions turned out to be even a little inaccurate, the National Weather Service  can use its huge paper trails to figure out went wrong to improve future forecasts. And how to better communicate with local and state leaders, not to mention the public. 

The comments by Maine Gov. Janet Mills were not nearly as egregious as what Trump did there. Her criticism was pretty mild and fleeting. It didn't involve any direct interference in their operations. Politicians almost never go that far. Still,   politicians will sometimes blame the meteorologists and their messengers if they mishandle a weather emergency. 

Those politicians know screwing up a storm response can end their careers. Or enhance their careers, if they handle the emergency deftly. (To be fair to the Maine governor, the National Weather Service offices in Maine DID warn of strong winds, but those winds were slightly stronger than forecast).

Still, efforts by politicians to blame supposedly inaccurate weather forecasts are a tried and true way to go.

When flash flooding from former Hurricane Ida inundated New York City and took 13 lives of residents in the process, then-mayor Bill de Blasio said, 'Here's what we did not know, that we would have literally shocking and unprecedented rainfall," the mayor said after the storm.  "No one projected that coming."

Only they did. The National Weather Service and other local meteorologists spent the days and hours ahead of the Ida flash flood pulling their hair out telling the public that the flooding would be especially severe and scary. 

Here in Vermont, it seems like the state's political leaders have a good working relationship with the National Weather Service. 

Prior to the Hurricane Irene floods in 2011, then-governor Peter Shumlin activated the state's emergency management center. He repeated NWS warnings of impeding severe floods. 

Much more recently, just ahead of, during and after the state's devastating July floods, Gov. Phil Scott kept going out of the way urging Vermonters to take NWS weather forecasts and warnings seriously. 

The day before the floods July 10 floods hit, Scott used National Weather Service's (accurate!) forecasts to declare a state of emergency, deploy swift water rescue teams around the state and warn people to be on guard and to take NWS flood warnings seriously. 

The combination of the NWS flood forecasts, the Scott administration's reaction to those forecasts and media attention to all this likely saved lives. Two people died in the summer floods, which is obviously tragic. But a disaster of that magnitude "should have" created more fatalities. It didn't. The coordinated weather warnings between the NWS and Vermont leaders surely helped. 

The December floods were a bit more complicated. Rainfall was slightly more than the NWS predicted and snowmelt was slightly more intense than expected. So the flooding that emerged that Monday was worse, somewhat catching the Scott administration by surprise. 

But by late morning and early afternoon that day, Vermont emergency managers were on top of it. So was the National Weather Service office in South Burlington.

The bottom line is, the next time you hear politicians and even the public say the "storm came with no warning," check out the receipts from the National Weather Service. Sometimes they do botch a forecast, or don't issue a timely warning. But often, they're just a convenient scapegoat.