People love to talk about the weather and, as climate modelers have proven, they like to exaggerate about the weather too. Hurricanes are no exception.

I talked to the pressman of the Banner-Tribune Tuesday. He was in Dallas and I was sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of the Banner-Tribune office in Franklin. He had heard that Gustav missed Houma and the eye plowed through Franklin and this area was devastated. He was relieved to learn that whatever the news source, they had it backwards and I told him Franklin was in good shape overall. We got our hair mussed and some homes and businesses suffered tornadic hits that will take a little longer to recover from but otherwise it could have been worse … like Houma.

I have read news reports in neighboring papers about the eye following up U.S. 90, going through Franklin, and points northwest which are untrue.

The eye actually broke into two pieces as it passed through Houma and a very small part of it went through Morgan City. Coordinates show that the bulk of the eye went up lower St. Martin parish and points north of us. Franklin did not get the eye, nor did New Iberia or Lafayette.

This storm had features of tricking you into believing you were in an eye due to the heavy influence of dry air that came in from Texas. That tends to cause a hurricane to band out in extremely long storm bands interspersed with bands of drier inactive air that actually can appear calm. The tattletale that you’re not in an eye is the lack of blue sky.

Gustav did the same thing that Katrina and Lili did if you care to go back and review the archival radar. When tropical storms hit lots of dry air in their path they usually do one of two things. Either the western portion of the storm collapses which also weakens the eastern portion (Lili) or it gets a more oval shape, weakens, and bends away from the dry air (Katrina and Gustav).

Dry air has saved many a coastline from devastating destruction. In 2006, upper level dust from the Sahara desert was so concentrated that most tropical depressions that tried to form were killed. The Saharan dust band is always present during hurricane season but 2006 was a major earth-moving event and hence we had practically no storms.

The ultimate weakening of Gustav before landfall should have been apparent to any first year meteorologist based on the water vapor imagery. It is disturbing that the emergency preparers and the weather service did not come clean about a severely weakening Gustav prior to landfall.

This practice of great expectations followed by less than delivered results will only make people more determined not to leave when a real threat looms.

Emergency personnel and the weather service should adopt a just the facts policy and quit crying wolf. Their Chicken Little strategy will not work long term and lives are sure to be lost because of it.