Billions of dollars spent on all types of fancy equipment including satellites, a world-wide network of tracking stations and “think tanks” full of learned scholars.

Even with all that technology, they still can’t predict what the weather is going to do.

The prognosticators could just as well wet their index fingers, face the wind and say: “Yup, this is the way it’s blowing.”

Ever since Oak Harbor’s final football game of the regular season against Cascade Oct. 27 and for the first two state playoff games, weather gurus predicted Hurricane Katrina-like conditions.

All three games were played on artificially-turfed fields, the first at Everett and the final two at Mount Vernon so even in the event of inclement weather, a decent playing surface would be available.

Guess what? Despite all the dire predictions, only the fourth quarter of the Nov. 11 game against Mariner was the slightest bit nasty.

Sure the wind blew at all three games, but what do you expect in Western Washington’s late fall season?

Maybe the fates will again be smiling on the Oak Harbor Wildcats this week. I sure hope so.

At any rate we’re playing in Snohomish against Skyview tonight and once again, the forecasters have predicted foul weather.

Maybe someone should do the famous Hopi rain dance prior to the game. That should guarantee fair weather and another Oak Harbor victory.

• • •

For a sports writer, doing high school previews for upcoming seasons is a tedious task.

You try to make them interesting for our newspaper readers and try to have every one of them read differently, but it’s sometimes a difficult thing to do.

Every once in awhile a coach will make you smile during a preview interview, and such was the case with new Oak Harbor boys basketball coach Mike Washington.

Actually it wasn’t during the interview, it was when he was talking to the players on the first day of practice telling them the rules and regulations.

During his oratory, he mentioned there would be no “bling-bling” worn on his basketball court.

“If I see any of you guys wearing bling-bling, it belongs to me,” he said.

This prompted a couple of the players to begin quickly removing their necklaces.

That made me smile and caused my mind to flashback to the days when I was a high school football coach.

With the Stanfield Tigers, we constantly had to remind the players not to wear wrist watches on the practice field.

Our reminders were usually good for about three days.

We’d have our manager make the timepiece collection from the errant players and one day, his arm resembled a vendor from Central Park in New York City.

“Hey tourist, you wanna buy a Rolex?”

I don’t know, maybe the Tigers had stock options in the Timex watch company or something.

One thing is for sure, I don’t care if your watch can “take a licking and keep on ticking” — if you get hit by a 285-pound lineman, it’s broke!