Tampabay: Funding might foil hurricane forecaster

Funding might foil hurricane forecaster

The government stopped supporting William Gray some time ago, and insurance companies backed out last fall, leaving him to twist in the wind.

By CRAIG PITTMAN, Times Staff Writer

NEW ORLEANS -- As he has for the past 19 years, William Gray popped up at the National Hurricane Conference on Friday to deliver his annual predictions of how many tropical storms would swirl to life this year.

But in the course of his brief address, the 73-year-old Gray dropped a bombshell: After all this time he might have to close up shop. He's nearly out of money, and the government refused to help.

Later, in a profanity-laced interview with a pair of reporters, Gray vowed to do everything he can to keep his Colorado State University program alive. "This is my whole life," he said. "I'm not going to just walk away from it. Big Brother is not going to knock me out ... I'm an old guy, but I've still got a little fight left."

This year's prediction: The hurricane season, which begins June 1 and continues through November, will produce 12 named tropical storms, eight of them full-fledged hurricanes. He predicted a 68 percent chance the storms would make landfall somewhere, with a 38 percent chance that a hurricane would hit somewhere on the gulf coast.

Gray's forecasts are free to the public, but they don't come cheap. He figures they cost about $450,000 a year.

Until 1999 he enjoyed some government funding, but then that dried up. For the past four years he has been supported by hundreds of thousands of dollars from two insurance companies, USAA and State Farm. But both discontinued his funding last fall.

As a result, Gray said he already has used $45,000 of his retirement fund to keep it going for the past three months, but he needs at least another $200,000. He encouraged a pair of longtime employees to take early retirement and was unable to take on any new graduate students because he cannot pay them. He's not even paying himself a salary.

In a letter to a USAA official last week, Gray said his research now is "hanging by a thread." He is still getting $50,000 from one company, Lexington Insurance, but that's not nearly enough, he said.

USAA spokesman Paul Berry said his company is encouraging other insurance companies and agencies to provide Gray the money he needs. "His research is very important," Berry said.

But Gray said it should not be left to the insurance companies to pay the bills. "Why should they fund what the government should be paying for?"

Gray said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has turned him down a dozen times, and no other government agency will help. He said they want him to fail because of his age and because of his vocal skepticism about global warming.

"They're saying, 'Oh, Gray is old ... Gray is just a loose cannon down there, stay away from him, don't give him a g-- d--- thing,' " he said.

"Dr. Gray is a well-respected member of the scientific community," replied Scott Smullen, a spokesman for NOAA, which oversees the National Weather Service. "He is welcome to compete for all research grants available."

Gray is tall and angular, and speaks in a voice full of dramatic swoops and slides. He has been involved in meteorology for 50 years and has studied hurricanes for 45. His only hobby is the weather. "I'm a dullard."

His annual predictions, which began in 1984, have become as avidly watched by residents of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastlines as by insurers, meteorologists and the military.

He comes up with his forecasts by studying North Atlantic water temperatures, rainfall in Africa and weather patterns in the South Pacific. He also compares his data with hurricane records dating back 100 years.

Some years he misses badly. Last year he predicted eight hurricanes, double what actually appeared. The year before he predicted five, and nine appeared.

But in December 1998 he predicted nine hurricanes in 1999, and he was over by just one. The next year went the other way: He predicted seven in 2000, and there were eight.

Overall, he said, "we're doing damn well." After all, he noted, "we can't say for sure whether it's going to rain the next day or not, and here I am trying to tell you what's going to happen six months in the future."

The one thing he cannot predict is whether he will be back next year. But he will not go down without a fight, he said.

"I'm at the point now where I just don't care -- screw it," he said.

-- Times staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.