A weatherman for HLN, a cable and satellite television news channel owned by Turner Broadcasting System, blasted Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam during his Wednesday morning broadcast.
HLN meteorologist Bob Van Dillen publicly rebuked the Democratic governor of Virginia for his comments and response to Monday’s heavy snowfall and massive traffic delays along interstate 95.
The storm, which stranded almost 100 cars on a frozen interstate, some for up to 27 hours, was forecasted correctly by Van Dillen, who predicted the storm would dump about a foot of snow.
According to Daily Caller, when Van Dillen became aware that Gov. Northam “insisted there would only be a few inches of snow,” which fueled a scenario for hundreds of motorists to be stranded in potentially deadly weather conditions, he “called the Governor out.”
A video clip of the broadcast posted to Twitter shows Van Dillen taking the governor to task: “Who’s the jackass that said that? We had it pegged for like three days [in] advance.”
In what appears to be comments directed to the governor personally, Van Dillen said, “You knew it was going to be a lot of snow… Shut up, dude.”
Watch:
Van Dillen ended his unauthorized comments by saying: “That pisses me off, I got to just be honest with you. When people say that, ‘Oh, we didn’t know it was coming.’ Yeah, you did.”
In a follow-up interview, Northam defended his comments and decisions not to activate Virginia’s National Guard or declare a state of emergency.
While speaking with a Daily Caller reporter, he claimed, “It was an incredibly unusual event,” then cited the difficulty of “deploying works and equipment on icy roads.”
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