A while back a couple of astronomers used their years of meteor-forecasting experience and computer models to predict a flurry of shooting stars for this past weekend’s annual Leonid meteor shower. Their work was confirmed by a couple other meteor forecasters.

The prediction was highlighted by NASA. Our Skywatching Columnist Joe Rao and I both reported on the forecast, and then I blogged about how cool it is to freeze your tail off and ruin a good night’s sleep to go out in the pre-dawn to see this annual display. You can all go back to bed now.

The Leonids reminded us once again that they are fickle and that meteor forecasting is a tricky business. The shower was a bust.

“It would appear that the expected outburst either failed to materialize, or consisted of extremely faint meteors,” Rao said in his astronomy newsletter.

It was not the first inaccurate Leonids forecast. In 2001, four separate research groups all missed the mark to some degree (but at least the display that year was indeed fantastic).

This year the Leonids simply stunk. Even the regular, dependable non-peak Leonids, which typically number around 10 per hour with a few bright fireballs during the pre-dawn hours for a couple nights surrounding the peak, seemed absent. I saw more Leonids on Thursday morning, well before the expected peak, than on the mornings over the weekend.

Observer David Stine in Oklahoma called it “the worst meteor shower I have ever seen.”

So, at the risk of testing your patience, I might suggest we all turn our attention toward the “dependable Geminid meteor shower,” which peaks every year around Dec. 13-14. The Geminids reliably produce 1-2 meteors per minute during peak times. Really. The SPACE.com viewer’s guide for that event will post on Friday, Dec. 8. And we’ll see.