`High Risk` Of Dubious Claim in NOAA PR

DISCLAIMER: These opinions are my own and may not represent the opinions of AccuWeather, Inc.
I don't mean to nitpick the government here -- and their 18-minute lead time for the Enterprise, Alabama tornado was commendable. Some would argue that lead time more than 20 minutes wouldn't even save many more lives.

But NOAA made a claim in their March 2nd Press Release that seems to be easily disproved from their own archives. I just know if this were AccuWeather's PR that someone would have already busted us on this, so let's be fair. If I'm missing something here, let me know.

I have pasted in a screen capture of part of the PR below:

But visiting their SPC Archive site, I find the following maps, which indicate that the High Risk was not issued until March 1st and instead only a Slight risk was in effect on February 27th. And in addition, the first High Risk issued on the morning of March 1st didn't completely cover the cities where major tornadoes occurred in the first morning update of the map. City locations very approximate, overlaid by me.

Again, I'm not criticizing their forecast, just what they said in the PR. The forecast at 13Z on March 1st was perfect, and should have given enough time for people in the targeted area to prepare for the storms.

How was our forecast? I'll take a look at that, and how the Forecast Models did, in my next entry.