The superstorm over Hurricane Dorian's projected reach just went off the scale.
A union leader for federal National Weather Service workers lashed out against agency bosses at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for defending President Donald Trump's claim that Alabama would get hit by the monster hurricane.
"Let me assure you the hard working employees of the NWS had nothing to do with the utterly disgusting and disingenuous tweet sent out by NOAA management tonight," Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, tweeted Friday.
Sobien also railed in a Daily Beast interview that NOAA threw its own NWS workers "under the bus" by giving Trump cover in his dayslong claim that Alabama was forecast to get hit by Dorian.
"These are the people risking their lives flying into hurricanes and putting out forecasts that save lives. Never before has their management undercut their scientifically sound reasoning and forecasts," Sobien told the outlet. "Are people not going to believe the Hurricane Center or our forecasts now?"
There was reportedly even talk among NWS workers about using Sharpies to mark up their NOAA shirts _ a swipe at the black marker-altered map Trump used in the Oval Office on Wednesday to include the Alabama in the projected storm path.
Last Sunday, Trump warned that Alabama, along with the Carolinas and Georgia, was "most likely to be hit (much) harder than anticipated."
But the NWS in Birmingham tweeted back: "Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east."
On Friday, NOAA fanned the flames by siding with the president.
"Birmingham National Weather Service's Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time," the federal agency said in a statement.
"From Wednesday, August 28, through Monday, September 2, the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama."
