Hurricane Hype?

"Those who would try and characterize the government and NHC actions of the last
few days as overreactions, are the same ones who’d crucify them if they under reacted. - Ragman in comments on Weather Nerd

The blog Weather Nerd has an interesting article called Apocalypse-Not about media and public reaction to hurricane Gustav. After mandatory evacuation for "the mother of all storms", it landed west of New Orleans as a category 2 with minor damage. "Live TV reports suggest little if any serious wind damage ... although there are reports of some water coming over the Industrial Canal."

With regard to the statement that Gustav is “turning out to be far less than what was previously forecast,” that’s not really fair ... There were plausible alternative scenarios whereby Gustav would be a calamity. The contemporaneous plausibility of these calamitous scenarios is not retroactively invalidated by the fact that, thankfully, a different scenario has occurred. - Weather Nerd

It is crucial that blogospheric and journalistic snark not take hold here... There are, and will continue to be, plentiful examples of ridiculous media over hype, and those are deeply unfortunate ... What matters, though, is this: the forecasts were not “hype,” and the evacuations were not “hype.” Gustav had the legitimate potential to be far worse than this, and decisions had to be made at a time when we could not depend on the more favorable scenario that has instead occurred. - Weather Nerd

In the story "The Boy who Cried Wolf", the farmers got tired of the false alarms and stopped paying attention to the cries of "Wolf!". When a wolf did appear, no one heeded the warning. Likewise with Hurricanes, people ignore official warnings because last the officials got it wrong. Then when the "big one" does occur, residents are taken by surprise and sometimes die in their homes.

Bottom Line
Always treat every hurricane with respect and prepare for the worst. Nature is fickle.