It was interesting to compare weather "experts" on two talk shows last night. "The O'Reilly Factor" had someone from Accu-Weather, while "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC had an NBC meteorologist.

The NBC meteorologist clearly explained the potential path of Hurricane Wilma and also noted a very important point: this projected path depended on an upper-level trough over the midwest creating the proper steering winds. If this trough didn't develop, then the hurricane could stall. He showed that one computer model recognized this possibility.

The Accu-Weather person presented the hurricane track prediction as Accu-Weather's, but this is wrong. The track prediction is from the National Hurricane Center. With hurricanes, there is an understanding among meteorologists that pretty much everyone will present the same forecast track, although they can discuss reasons why the path may differ. This is to prevent widespread public confusion. It's not like when Nick Gregory says sunny and 80 while Craig Allen says rain and 65.

In addition, the Accu-Weather person declared: "You heard it here first: this will be the last landfalling hurricane in the United States this season." This is not only off-topic, but is also potentially untrue. Finally, the Accu-Weather person started getting excited about flooding in New England next week, when this also remains to be seen.

I find that Accu-Weather is constantly fabricating headlines just to get attention. It's not surprising that their person wound up on Fox.