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"The people should have been prepared for this eventuality but we have gotten so use to believing the weather man and his predicted paths, that we forget nature does it's own thing and we can't control it."

You are so right, and when it's over the people either complain that they weren't warned strongly enough or if they are lucky and it's not bad, they complain that the news people made too big a deal of it. I'm sure it's very hard to get it exactly right, that's what makes "prediction" so difficult.

if they are lucky and it's not bad, they complain that the news people made too big a deal of it.

I'm sure there are people in the Tampa area doing that now, but so far few people in the press are listening. I did see a quote from a man who felt stupid because he evacuated Tampa and went to Orlando. Well, HELLO! The storm has been predicted to cross Florida for several days now.

I am currently still officially under a hurricane warning, even though Charley has passed here now.

Yesterday at noon we were right on the path. After the jog west, predictions showed the storm going west of us, but we kept preparing, because it could have just as easily moved a tiny bit easterly and hit us. Wasn't predicted to, but Hugo was predicted to hit us rather than SC up until late afternoon the day it hit.

We spent several hours in traffic evacuating from Floyd, which didn't hit here. Even as it was obviously passing offshore, the local weather people were continuing to hype it, however. I have trouble believing that local weather people somewhere downplayed a storm - usually it's their big moment and they play it for all it's worth.

Read "The Storm of the Century," about the Florida Keys Labor Day Storm of 1935 (killed about 600). Also "Isaac's Storm," about the Galveston Gale of 1900 (killed 8000). In both cases there were many warnings about storms and the blame was placed on the forecasters for not telling the victims how bad it would be. Now the warnings could have been better, but forecasting was an even more inexact art in 1900 and 1935 and it certainly seems to me that any warning at all should have been heeded. But no, it was the forecaster's fault for not telling them how bad it would be (just as an aside, I think the critics were right about the inadequate warnings of 1900, but wrong to place any blame on the NWS for the 1935 disaster).

The lesson I hope all along the Atlantic and Gulf Coast will learn is prepare for the worst possible scenario. You will evacuate needlessly several times in your life, but that is far better than ending up like those Bonus Marchers on the Keys, the residents of Galveston, the hurricane partiers at the Richelieu Apartments in Gulf Shores, or - our newest object lesson - those unfortunates in the trailer park in Punta Gorda.

However, if you choose to remain in your homes despite warnings, I for one will have little sympathy for your complaints that the forecasters never told you how bad it would be. The predicted paths have ranges and probability fields for a reason. Newspapers publish predicted paths as lines because that is easy, but the National Hurricane Center has been providing strike probability maps for years. They also provide predicted wind strength ranges. All the storms people complained about recently - Hugo, Andrew and Charley to name a few - were within the prediction ranges both in track and strength (albeit in the very upper range on the strength predictions). If you are anywhere in the predicted strike probability cone published by the NHC, you are on notice. Either evacuate or live with the consequences. Don't blame the forecaster.