Let’s settle this once and for all. I have access to a program that only emergency managers, the government and meteorologists have access to. The Birmingham office uses it. It's called Hurrevac. I will show you EXACTLY what they were looking at when they tweeted and why it was a reasonable forecast.
This is the location of Dorian (with the track it has made since overlayed) for advisory #33 on 1 Sept, at 11 AM EDT.
This is the FORECASTED wind field straight from the OFFICIAL NHC advisory at it's closest approach to Alabama - in 72 hours - valid for 4 Sept at 11 AM EDT -
As you can clearly see - the tropical storm winds are BARELY touching the coasts of Florida and Georgia and TS winds are well away from Alabama....187 miles to be exact. HOWEVER - that would only the case over water - and in reality, they would never really extend that far overland.
So - as the OFFICIAL NHC forecast products show on intra-governmental programs available to NOAA weather offices and emergency managers PROVE - Alabama was never under any threat.
That's the facts - according to the data.
Let’s settle this once and for all. I have access to a program that only emergency managers, the government and meteorologists have access to. You do understand that's still arbitrary right? Before Sunday the Euro and GFS were worlds apart. The GFS had the track across Florida and Euro had the turn, then they switched although the Euro was still off the Florida coast. The NHC had to guess at the track you displayed and they made the correct decision in hindsight. That doesn't mean the forecast was going to be correct. On the contrary the Bermuda high could have strengthened a bit and caused the hurricane to meander west over Florida and eventually enter the gulf.
Saturday 5am: "The track forecast becomes much more problematic after 48 h. The global models the NHC normally uses, along with the regional HWRF and HMON models, have made another shift to the east to the point where none of them forecast Dorian to make landfall in Florida. However, the UKMET ensemble mean still brings the hurricane over the Florida peninsula, as do several GFS and ECMWF ensemble members." So still a possibility of crossing into the Gulf of Mexico, in fact a distinct possibility on Saturday.
Sunday 5am: "By tonight, the global models show the ridge weakening, and this evolution should result in a slowing of the forward speed, with the hurricane becoming nearly stationary around 48 hours. In comparison to its earlier runs, the new ECMWF track forecast takes the system farther to the west during the next couple of days, and is the southwesternmost model through 48 hours."
So while still off the coast, still some uncertainty. Discussions archived at: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2019/DORIAN.shtml?
You can't use that Sunday Sep 1 track diagram to describe that uncertainty, it's not displayed. The track is a decision based on a variety of track models and changes in those models. You certainly cannot use the fact that the track eventually verified to assume there was no uncertainty. If you want to display model runs or describe the uncertainty some other way, that's fine.