Donald Trump Warns Alabama Hurricane Dorian Will Hit State Hard But He’s Wrong, Says National Weather Service
Just hours after Donald Trump admitted that he had never heard of a Category 5 hurricane, even though as The Inquisitr reported there have now been four including Hurricane Dorian during his term, Trump took to his Twitter account to warn residents of the state of Alabama that they were about to be hit hard by the powerful hurricane.
There was only one problem. Alabama is not in the path of the hurricane and as MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi pointed out via his Twitter account, “no models at all show Dorian affecting Alabama. At all.” Trump’s error forced the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, to issue a correction of Trump’s warning.
“Alabama will NOT see any impacts from Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane Dorian will be felt across Alabama,” the NWS Birmingham stated on its official Twitter account. “The system will remain too far east.”
Trump repeated his warning to Alabama in an exchange with reporters on the White House lawn, according to a CNBC report, in which he said that Alabama will “get a bit of a beat down.”
In his Twitter post on Sunday morning, Trump said that “South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.”
Though Dorian will not reach as far inland as Alabama, Trump is correct that the hurricane, reported to be moving through the Bahamas at just three miles per hour on Sunday afternoon, appears to be one of the most powerful ever recorded.
“It is not very often that we measure such strong winds,” the National Hurricane Center said in a statement quoted by NBC News, after surface winds of 185 miles per hour and gusts up to an incredible 220 miles per hour were recorded on the Bahamian island of Abacos as the hurricane smashed into coastlines there.
South Florida appeared to be out of the path of the hurricane’s most powerful winds, but weather officials remained uncertain as to whether Dorian would score a direct hit on the area — a region that houses Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago resort, where Trump has vacationed for nearly 100 days of his term so far, according to The Washington Post.
“The hurricane will move dangerously close to the Florida east coast late Monday through Tuesday night,” according to a 5 p.m. EDT National Hurricane Center statement, quoted by The Sun Sentinel newspaper.
In the Bahamas, as of early Sunday afternoon, no fatalities had yet been reported, according to Bahamas’ Ministry of Tourism and Aviation Director Joy Jibrilu, as quoted by The Sun Sentinel. But the hurricane had already wrought “devastating” damage to property and infrastructure, Jibrilu said.
