The National Weather service has come under fire from Georgia governor Nathan Deal for failing to issue warnings to the state about the storm that dropped 2 inches of snow on the peach state this week. Deal told reporters that he didn’t want to play the “blame game”, but that they had no warning of the coming storm.
They didn’t? Really?
Well if he means they didn’t personally come to his mansion weeks in advance and say “hey, we are going to have 2 inches of snow on this date”, then he is right. But if he’s talking about warning windows that the rest of the country is used to, well he is flat our wrong.
The Weather Channel has put together a timeline of statements from the NWS about the storm. They started with a watch being issued Sunday afternoon and escalated up to a warning starting to be issued on Monday afternoon, followed by a full warning for the entire Atlanta area at 3:38 Tuesday morning, about 8 hours before the snow started falling. The governor even doubled-down on this claim at a Wednesday press conference, saying the NWS wasn’t “as accurate” as some local coverage. Of course that doesn’t hold either, given the fact that the NWS’ last warning at 3:38am Tuesday called for “1-2 inches”.
But this all comes back to responsibility. It’s obvious that the governor dropped the ball on this one, so why isn’t he taking responsibility? Why is he wanting to blame the NWS, which is a socialized service by Republican standards, even after the NWS was proved right? And what kind of message is Deal sending the children of Georgia? “Hey, if you screw up just blame the other guy, even if they were right”
Hopefully the people of Georgia will quickly realize that Republican leadership is always a big gamble. Your Republican governor couldn’t even handle a small winter storm. How would you expect to handle some real disaster????