He even got the time right: Saturday night. He was not sure just how big it would be, but on Sean Hannity's radio show he explained that it could be as bad as Hurricane Gloria or as bad as a hurricane that hit the Eastern Seaboard in 1821.

Bastardi is a global warming skeptic.

He based his forecast on history, the cycle of temperatures for the Atlantic (high), the cycle of the temperatures in the Pacific (low), and a high-pressure system that was headed from the Rocky Mountains.

Other forecasters eventually got the path right. Everybody had a different computer model.

Millions of people were warned and damages - at least on the coast - seemed to be minimized.

But Vermont and other Northeast states are now going through the hell of what West Virginia went through in 1985 when Hurricane Juan put half the state under water.

Yet people complained about the predictions.

Media critic Howard Kurtz and British reporter Toby Harnden were particularly harsh in assessing the warnings. Hindsight is 20-20, isn't it?

"The truth is that the dire warning beforehand suited both politicians and journalists," Harnden wrote for the Telegraph.

"Just as with the minor earthquake that shook the East Coast last week causing no loss of life and virtually no damage, Irene became a huge story because it was where the media lived.

"For politicians, Irene was a chance to either make amends or appear in control. The White House sent out 25 Irene emails to the press on Saturday alone."

Well, you will get no disagreement from me that the storm received coverage because it was in the backyard of all the TV networks.

But President Obama did what he was supposed to do. He warned 65 million people to pay attention.

Bravo.

Upbraiding New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for telling the Snookies of the world to get off the Jersey Shore is nonsense. Somebody has to tell these fools to come in out of the rain.

Even New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, whom conservatives detest for worrying about salt rather than getting the snow off the streets, deserves praise for taking the necessary precautions.

Irene was a tropical storm by the time it hit New York City.

So what? A tropical storm is no day in the park. Witness the photos of the big thick trees upended in Central Park.

As for Kurtz, he could not wait to blame the media for Irene being a bad rain rather than the end of New York City.

"It was raining in Manhattan on Sunday morning, and the dogged correspondents in their brightly colored windbreakers were getting wet," Kurtz wrote.

"But the apocalypse that cable television had been trumpeting had failed to materialize. And at 9 a.m., you could almost hear the air come out of the media's hot-air balloon of constant coverage when Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm."

I will admit that the TV reporters on scene looked silly.

I watched Geraldo Rivera live from Times Square on Saturday night for entertainment purposes only. He was a poor man's Dan Rather in a poor man's hurricane.

But there is an old saying: Prepare for the worst and pray for the best. Those prayers were answered last weekend.

Instead of grumbling that the hurricane was overblown, people should be grateful.

They should also be prepared. Bastardi also predicted that a storm brewing off the coast of Africa could develop into a hurricane that follows the same path as Irene.

How big? Who is to say?

But I would keep the plywood and the flashlights handy, and the gas tank filled, just in case.  

Surber may be reached at donsur...@dailymail.com. His blog is at http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber.