By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

As I was watching Velvet Revolver last Friday night at this year’s BayFest and thinking how nice it would be if someone would give emaciated lead singer Scott Weiland a sandwich, I couldn’t help thinking how lucky we are to have such a terrific music festival.

After all, 35 bucks for a whole weekend of music is pretty amazing, and the BayFest organizers keep bringing a better product to the table each year. Also, most similar festivals in other cities are drowning in red ink, so kudos to Bobby Bostwick and the others who worked so hard to put on another great fest.

And thank God we weren’t hit by a hurricane.

If you’ve watched the local and national television weather coverage over the last few weeks, you’re probably surprised we’re not all searching desperately in the post-hurricane rubble for Weiland’s skeletal body and Slash’s witch hat after they were blown away by hurricane-force winds at BayFest. After all, just days before the festival, some of our weather folks were talking about sub-tropical whatchamacallits and generally making everyone nervous.

Now I’m not trying to unload on the TV weather folks – I know they have a job to do and plenty of goofy consultants telling them how to do it. But it just seems like since Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, the tropical weather rhetoric has hit a ridiculous crescendo.

For example, just a couple of weeks ago my wife had planned a nice sailing trip aboard the schooner Joshua in Mobile Bay with friends and family. Unfortunately, one of those newly invented sub-tropical things crossed Florida and was “bearing down” on us. We spent two days trying to figure out a Plan B for the party since the Bay was sure to be nothing but flood and froth. I think the Weather Channel even flew in their storm crow Jim Cantore to stand out on Dauphin Island.

But then it barely rained that Friday night and Saturday was cloudy for the first part of the day, but turned out gorgeous. In essence, nothing happened. Now being 40, I can officially use old man terminology, so I’ll say “back in my day” we’d have called that event a “rain storm.” Not much of one at that. It certainly didn’t warrant any of the histrionics it got from many weather experts.

Certainly I’m not trying to downplay the importance of solid meteorological news when there’s a hurricane churning in the Gulf, but it seems amply clear The Weather Channel and some local news stations are putting a very high priority on breathless tropical weather reporting because they know we’ll keep tuning in to see if something’s on its way. But there’s a Chicken Little effect here that’s turning off me and, I’m sure, many others. It sure seems if you’re wrong enough times, nobody’s going to listen anymore.

For instance, is there anything in the world more worthless than the annual hurricane projections by Colorado meteorologist Dr. William Gray? I bet we’d get better information from Dionne Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network. (OK, I KNOW that reference dated me.) While I’m sure Dr. Gray is a nice fellow and probably would be the first one to say his projections are prone to being off considerably, his annual pronouncements are ballyhooed each year as being practically etched in stone.

Every year after Gray’s projections come out, we get the local TV weather folks saying, “Well, Dr. William Gray’s annual predictions are in again folks, and it looks like we’re in for another busy Hurricane Season. Better stay tuned here and go to Food World and get your hurricane tracking charts with my picture on it and buy some of our station’s official hurricane season plywood for your windows, because it’s gonna blow!”

The amazing thing is the projections are almost always waaaaay wrong. I’m sure Dr. Gray must have nailed it right on the head once, prompting all this treatment as some kind of weather oracle, but at least for the past few years he’s been quite wrong.

Look at this year’s projections, for instance. Colorado Bill projected 17 named storms, nine hurricanes and five major hurricanes. As I write this Oct. 7, we’ve had 13 named storms (pretty far off), four hurricanes (less than half of what was predicted) and two bad boys (again, less than half). Can you think of anyone who could be that far off base and still be considered credible?

Consider last year as well. Remember how we were all shell-shocked after that ridiculous 2005 season and the Katrina devastation, and were told the 2006 season was going to be awful too? Gray predicted the same 17, nine and five scenario for last year. What we got was 10 named storms, three hurricanes (one of which made it by 1 mph) and the quietest season we’ve seen in a long time. Yet these stupid predictions were still trotted out the next year.

And think about 2005, that’s the year we had 28 storms and ran out of hurricane names, having to name six of them after Greek foods, or something like that. I’m sure Dr. Gray didn’t see that catastrophe coming either.

On top of all that, Gray keeps changing his projections throughout the season, which seems a bit like odds makers changing gambling lines while the game is being played. What kind of prediction is it if you get to change it halfway through the season?

I hate to pick on Dr. Gray so much, but frankly I’d put as much credence in a chimp picking a random number out of a pickle barrel at the beginning of hurricane season, provided the chimp had a pocket protector and a bow tie to add an air of credibility.

The theater of this tropical storm song and dance has me fed up. I’m sure some consultant somewhere thinks it’s brilliant to have the meteorologists come out with their sleeves rolled up whenever they’re telling us about something tropical, but it’s not like they’re digging ditches out behind the station.

Keep your jackets on, boys, at least until there’s really something coming that might ruin our birthdays or BayFest.

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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