Yesterday, a television meteorologist explained that it's a different sort of hurricane and that even though it may be categorized as only a "one" level, it is extremely dangerous for other reasons. The size of it is monstrous and I've heard that the amount of rain it will dump on the NE will most certainly cause horrible flooding.
Last year's Hurricane Irene was nothing compared to this one but go back and look at video of the flooding that resulted. Now people are saying this one is hyped because Irene didn't turn out so badly. I wouldn't take the chance myself.
Flooding is always the most serious problem with weak hurricanes and tropical storms. That is simply because the winds are less of a factor. If you remember last year, the global warming crowd was claiming that we would have to come up with a new Category 6 to describe these new bigger hurricanes. It was later discovered that the hurricanes only appeared bigger in modern times because our satellite images are better with more resolution. IMHO - This one is being hyped worse then Irene simply because they want to over hype it to help the election (ie - see Al Gore was right). What we really need is a new Category 0 hurricane. Basically a large Tropical Storm over hyped as a Hurricane. Then people would know to be cautious of flooding.