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Washington (CNN) - US President Donald Trump showed a map of the trajectory of Hurricane Dorian in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon that seemed to include an addition showing that the hurricane could affect a large part of Alabama.
Trump said the map was the original forecast. But a similar image published by the White House last week did not include any impact on Alabama in its forecast.
- 🌀 Look where Dorian is right now
"That was the original graphic and it is seen that it would affect not only Florida but Georgia," Trump said Wednesday during an information session, while showing a map of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with a black line that surrounds a part of Alabama.
“He took a right turn. And, ultimately, we hope we get lucky. It depends on what happens with South Carolina and North Carolina, ”he added.
A White House official told CNN that there was a discussion in the Oval Office before the briefing on what the first models showed and that Dorian could have been worse than the initial projections. One of the officials in the room agreed and used a black marker, without prior notice, to explain it by extending a line to the southeast region of Alabama, according to the official, who described the situation as "harmless."
The official said the chart was not part of the initial presentation and that it was behind Trump, but the president moved it during the presentation to show how serious Dorian could have been.
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A source familiar with the briefing did not deny that Trump had drawn the black line on the map. "I'm not going to get into that," the source said, but confirmed that the line had been added during the hurricane briefing on Wednesday, before the press entered the Oval Office.
NOAA sent the questions to the White House, whose press office did not immediately respond to questions about the map.
A NOAA spokeswoman also declined to respond if Alabama had ever been in the impact cone and said she would need to follow up because she didn't have the information before her.
During the course of the hurricane's development, Trump has erroneously claimed on several occasions that Alabama was in the hurricane's path. The statement was rejected by meteorological experts, including the Birmingham, Alabama, branch of the National Weather Service.
“Alabama will NOT see any impact of #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts of Hurricane #Dorian will be felt throughout Alabama. The system will remain too far east, ”the office tweeted.
An initial, archived version of a NOAA map on Thursday, August 29 showed that the hurricane would be diverted to Florida, but it did not appear to have a black line showing that Alabama would be affected.
Trajectory of Hurricane Dorian, projected on August 29.
CNN Weather meteorologists said a Friday afternoon forecast showed that one tenth of a county in the southwest corner of Alabama was included in a model. But that map looks little like the one Trump showed on Wednesday. And the official follow-up of the National Hurricane Center never showed the Dorian journey entering the Gulf of Mexico, as Trump also stated.
"I know Alabama was in the original forecast," Trump said later Wednesday when asked about the image he showed, adding that there were other maps showing Alabama being "hit very hard."
When asked if the black line on Alabama was made with a permanent marker, Trump said: “I don't know. I do not know".
A source familiar with the matter says that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency, did not provide the altered map that Trump showed in the Oval Office.
"The map was not brought by the Department of Homeland Security for this briefing," the source said.
Despite the White House’s claim that Trump was being informed hourly about the hurricane, the president appeared to back his claim Wednesday night by citing a seven-day-old hurricane projection map of the District’s Administration District. South Florida Water. The map, a projection of the spaghetti model, shows several states in the southeastern US. UU. on Dorian Road, including Alabama.
“This was the originally projected path of the hurricane in its early stages. As you can see, almost all models predicted that it would pass through Florida and also hit Georgia and Alabama, ”Trump tweeted.
But spaghetti models like the one Trump tweeted are not forecasts. Instead, they show the unprocessed production of a computer model, and its data is taken into account by meteorologists from the National Hurricane Center that emit the official forecast of the center.
In addition, Sunday's spaghetti model projections, when Trump tweeted for the first time that Alabama could be on Dorian's path, did not include any potential clues that the hurricane could hit Alabama.
The text at the bottom of the map Trump tweeted says: "If something on this chart causes confusion, ignore the entire product." He also says that the statements of the National Hurricane Center "replace this product."
Jim Acosta, Gregory Wallace, Jeremy Diamond and Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
Hurricane Dorian