Some storms don't warrant overblown media coverage

Orlando | Do the media sometimes go too far beyond their civic duty in over-hyping storms that may be little more than a bunch of disorganized clouds off the African coast?

Possibly, said Chris Landsea, the science and operations officer with the National Hurricane Center. But when you're warning about the dangers of monster storms such as Hurricane Katrina barreling toward the coast, extensive media coverage is warranted.

"It's hard to over-hype something like that," Landsea said. "But on the other hand we should be careful in giving the same characteristics to every storm because they're not all the same."

For every Katrina, there are more instances where the media create more bluster than the storms themselves.

Max Mayfield, former head of the National Hurricane Center, said part of the problem is how the media work.

"The media does a great job in getting sound bites," he said.

But Mayfield said that limited resources and time constraints mean they also miss a lot of the other news that really affects their readers or viewers - namely the situation at the local level.

"You don't want a meteorologist or a weather man telling you when to evacuate or put up your hurricane shutters," he said. "You want that message to come from your local officials."

Mayfield said he hopes a new company he's involved in, America's Emergency Network, can help fill that news void by allowing government officials to communicate directly to the public via the Internet.

But there might be a logical reason, beyond ratings, for the media to hype storms.

A recent research paper by Landsea and several other scientists found that surging economic losses caused by hurricane strikes between 1900 and 2005 weren't the result of an increase in storm strength or activity.

The cause was simply more people, more buildings and more money crowding hurricane-prone areas. The population of New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties, for example, has increased by 100,000 residents since Hurricane Floyd hit in 1999.

Landsea said economic damage caused by hurricanes has been doubling every 10 to 15 years, a trend that's likely to continue.

"That's the biggest problem the U.S. has," Mayfield said of the country's surging coastal population, "and I don't know how we fix it."

With enhanced media coverage of storms, especially post-Katrina, has come some unreal expectations by the public.

Mayfield said one of his proudest accomplishments while at the Hurricane Center was the improvements made to storm tracking models.

Now meteorologists can predict a storm's path five days out nearly as well as the three-day outlooks of just a few years ago.

"It's a success story," Landsea said. "But it's also been a bit of a blessing in disguise because people want us to be perfect, and we're never going to be perfect."

gareth.mcgrath@starnewsonline.com