[maryfield48]

One think I can tell you is it does not seem to correlate with increased accuracy of reporting. I sat in my house in Kingston Jamaica on Sunday and watched the Weather Channel on cable telling everyone that the island had lost power (it hadn't - the power company had started to take areas off-line in a phased, organised manner) and that Jamaica was about to be devastated by this Category 4 monster, when it was clear from the advisories that Dean had stayed South and barring very unlikely massive change of direction, that the eye was going to pass 50-100 miles South of the island. Given that the Hurricane force winds were only 60 miles out from the eye, and that the Cat 4 winds were probably only 15 miles out, it would have been appropriate to ratchet down that type of sensationalism.

But then, people might have switched to watching golf or something.