premise: These zephyr-borne estimates went way up after the Grucci fireworks barge floated between Liberty Island and the skyline with an electric sign on it that said Talk (did I forget to say that this was Tina Brown's party for her new magazine, Talk ?) and hurled into the black sky a literally earth-shaking barrage of pyrotechnics.
hypothesis: The fire work display was not as big as expected, but still impressive.