After facing ridicule for suggesting over the weekend that Hurricane Dorian might strike Alabama, Donald Trump showed reporters a map on Wednesday that appeared to attempt to prove his point.

During a briefing on the storm’s threat to the U.S. east coast, the president held up an August 29 map from the National Weather Service showing initial projections of Dorian’s track into Florida. Someone appeared to have altered the map with a black line extending the track beyond Florida -- into southern Alabama.

“We got lucky in Florida -- very, very lucky indeed,” Trump said in the Oval Office, before holding up what he called an “original chart,” from six days earlier, forecasting a direct hit on Florida. “It was going toward the Gulf. That was what was originally projected, and it took a right turn and ultimately -- hopefully, we’re going to be lucky.”

Trump repeatedly claimed on Sunday that Alabama was in Dorian’s path -- he tweeted it, repeated it at the White House, and repeated it again during a visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But by then, the storm’s track had turned decidedly north and east.

The National Weather Service’s Birmingham office said in a tweet on Sunday that “no impacts from Hurricane Dorian will be felt across Alabama.” Trump nonetheless said his warning had been accurate.

“It was in fact correct that Alabama could have received some ‘hurt,’” he wrote. “Always good to be prepared!”

None of the U.S. National Hurricane Center Advisories from Thursday -- the date of the map Trump displayed on Wednesday in the Oval Office -- included Alabama in the projected path of the hurricane. Forecasts from Friday night and early Saturday morning showed a sliver of southeast Alabama within Dorian’s possible paths, but my midday Saturday, the storm wasn’t forecast to approach the state.

Trump said later on Wednesday that he didn’t know the six-day-old map he showed reporters in the Oval Office had been altered. He said Alabama was going to be hit by the storm in the “original forecast.”

“Georgia, Alabama was a different route. They actually have that a 95% chance probability. But Alabama was hit very hard -- was going to be hit very hard, along with Georgia,” Trump said. “The original path was through Florida. I think that’s probably three, four days old. On the right would have been Georgia, Alabama, et cetera.”

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