Are you referring to Isaac Cline, the tragically mistaken chief meteorologist in Galveston? The death toll from the 1900 Galveston hurricane included his pregnant wife. While Isaac Cline was deadly wrong to discourage building a seawall at Galveston, he did issue a hurricane warning without waiting for authorization from the bureaucrats above him.
One of the things he was dealing with was the fact that his predecessor had been mired in scandal and he was playing it safe, tragically.