My experience is that "coincidence" is the lazy person's way of explaining just about anything, but that true coincidence is really quite rare.

The e-mail which was cited above reached me on October 25, 2002, before the usenet forecast you have cited and it therefore predates that one. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see what the usenet forecast was - was it extremely vague, or of some actual use (if anyone took note). There is almost always a forecast somewhere on the web for So. California, so it is not surprising that this period also was included.