As the hurricane moved north over the weekend, on-air weather mavens jumped quickly to discussions of “nightmare scenarios,” including the Godzilla-like destruction of Manhattan Island through the dreaded “storm surge.”

That didn’t happen, a development that seemed to disappoint some of the more rabid Weather Channelers.

Said Isobars: “I saw a woman on TV who said that power company officials were working 16 hours a day, around the clock. Well, which is it? There are still 24 hours in a day, even on cable TV.”

Some viewers told the Tattler that during the storm they had opted to watch a PBS special on skunks or aging actresses sell their jewelry.

Said viewer Kurt Flood: “Basically, I think that anyone on TV who uses and reuses phrases like ’hunker down’ and ‘dodged a bullet’ should be beaten senseless. Get inside!”

“There is no evidence the founding fathers and mothers enjoyed the beef sundae,” said presidential historian Harold Des Moines. “Especially since Iowa didn’t get into the Union until 1846. But it’s a proud tradition here, kind of like getting federal subsidies to grow corn.”

Iowa nutritionist Patty Arbuckle thinks the beef sundae gets too much national media attention.

“We’ve got your corn dogs, of course,”’ she said. “And fried Twinkies are a big hit with the younger set, although I think I saw Mitt Romney noshing on one over the weekend. And - my favorite - you can still get a cinnamon roll as big as your head.

“Where the heck is Kirstie Alley?” Googly wondered aloud. “Has she lost any more weight? Or gained it all back? It doesn’t matter. As a professional celebrity she has a responsibility to say or do something stupid.”

Googly told the overflow crowd of journalists, many of whom were drinking heavily, that the demise of Oprah’s television show had damaged the national news cycle.

“You could always count on some halfwit actress bursting into tears over her divorce,” he said. “Or Oprah would suddenly recall some traumatic childhood incident of her own and that would keep us going.”

Googly dismissed the idea that the Great Recession had pushed celebrity journalism to the side.

“Nah,” he said. “Stupid doesn’t go away. We’ve learned that. I predict we’ll see Lindsay in court very soon.”

“I tried to take this stuff seriously, went to school and everything. The stock market went down 400 points, then it went up 400 points, then it went down 500 points. I was telling my clients that if those pinheads in Washington made a deal on the debt ceiling, this wouldn’t happen. I might as well advise them to bet their life savings on jai alai games or pro wrestling.”

Maude Barker expressed concern that Luver might jump out his office window, as has happened in other celebrated stock market collapses.

But police sources note than his office is on the ground floor, so they are discounting that possibility.

“Herb likes to get in nine holes of golf on a nice day,” said one of his clients, watching his IRA dissolve over Wall Street. “I figure he’ll snap out of it around cocktail hour.”

Maude Barker was worried about Luver. But she said that after years of listening to her boss’s advice and diversifying her investment portfolio, she was putting her money in a big sack and moving to northern Wales.

“I never figured the place was Stanford or Princeton or North Carolina,” said Verne, a retired short-haul trucker. “But they got some schools on that list I never heard of. And we still ain’t on it. Where the heck is St. Olaf’s?”

School officials are considering the formation of a blue-ribbon Task Force to upgrade COT for the next Forbes listing.

“We’ll look at everything,” said Mr. Chips. “The co-ed dorms, the free parking, the online classes where you never have to get out of bed.

“We noticed a lot of schools on the list don’t have majors in bartender science or contemporary Christian music, so we’ll look into that.

The Task Force is expected to take up work as soon as the entire school returns from the beach at Panama City, Fla.