AccuWeather: False Twitter community notes undermined Hurricane Beryl forecast, warnings
AccuWeather has called out X (formerly Twitter) for falsely undermining a Hurricane Beryl forecast through its community notes system designed to add context to potentially misleading posts.
The weather forecasting company reported Thursday, before Beryl was a tropical storm, that the system could pose a threat to the Caribbean as a tropical storm or hurricane. The system then grew into Category 4 hurricane that has since unleashed sustained winds of 150 mph on Grenada's Carriacou Island and on Monday remained a "extremely dangerous major hurricane" for the eastern Caribbean, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The note claimed that official hurricane forecasts can only come from the National Hurricane Center and that the forecast had "very little data to back it up and has a low chance of verifying."
AccuWeather Chief Executive Officer Steven R. Smith said the only inaccurate information found on the post is within the community note itself. He said the community note created doubt when the service tried to convey life-saving information.
"We issued that forecast because when we know something it is our philosophy to tell people because it's in the interest of public safety," Smith told USA TODAY Monday. "In this case here there's no other way to say it, then they just got it wrong. It's just flat out wrong."
AccuWeather's editorial department raised these concerns with X but did not receive a response. AccuWeather also posted a video Friday explaining how the forecasts are based with science and offer potentially life-saving information.
Every hour counts with hurricane preparation
The Thursday forecast offered a notice 24 to 30 hours before any other professional weather service, Smith said, noting it was no time for X to create unnecessary doubt for readers.
"Every hour, every minute counts when you're talking about preparation and in this case "potentially life and death decisions that have to happen here," Smith said. "Typically, hurricanes are a little different than tornadoes and severe thunderstorms where you have minutes to take action... It takes longer for people to actually both recognize it and then take action on it."
AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter said the service's mission in issuing forecasts ahead of all other sources, including the government, is to offer every extra hour they can get to adequately prepare for hurricane impact. He added that service's meteorologists make forecasts using its access to over 190 computer forecast guides and models as well as over 100 weather experts with decades of experience.
"We don't make those forecasts lightly. It's a very deliberate forecast that we made at that point in time in order to be able to provide people and businesses with extra advanced notice, which we believe was life saving," Porter said.
Hurricane Beryl heading toward Jamaica and Mexico
The storm, currently a Category 4 hurricane, will bring damaging gusts for the southern Windward Islands devastating impacts that will take months or years to rebuild particularly areas known for tourism, Porter said.
He added the storm is currently heading towards Jamaica with damaging winds, flooding rainfall and mudslides being a concern for parts of Hispaniola. The storm is forecast to move toward Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula later this week when it should lose some wind intensity, but it will still be considered dangerous.
"Then also there can even be impacts likely perhaps flooding, heavy rainfall, even up to South Texas here as we head into the weekend. These are things that we're monitoring and we'll be refining over the next couple of days," Porter said.
Hurricane Beryl path tracker
This forecast track shows the most likely path of the center of the storm. It does not illustrate the full width of the storm or its impacts, and the center of the storm is likely to travel outside the cone up to 33% of the time.
