I drove up to BJS gas around 8 am yesterday (Sat). Only 1 car ahead of me on line for gas and may maybe 10 peolpe were on line waiting for store to open (opens at 8am). I was there just to fill my jerry can and filled up car even though had half tank (it's good idea when humidity is 100% not to let tank go below half).
When I went to the gym later and got out at 11am car line to BJS was solid up Daniel St and left turn lane on Rt110 was solid almost back to Price pky (Lowes turnoff) for a total of about 1/2 mile of solid cars. I never saw that before.
It's bad when the news makes such a big deal (almost hysterical hype) about a storm that is just barely a hurricane (as of 8am today it has been downgraded to a tropical storm with center midway between Montauk and Block Island). The news loses (whatever is left of) its credibility and when the big one comes people may not take it seriously.
Ps. Most of the people filling gas cans I saw (like me I assume for generators ) had large plastic gas containers. I don't understand why anyone would have a multi-gallon plastic gas containers that they load into the back of their cars; my neighbor has two one and he stores it in his attached garage. I store my gas in a welded seams steel military gerry can and when the storm has passed will dump the gas into my cars. But then again I'm a "belt and suspenders" kinda guy; I wear suspenders in case my belt holding up my pants fails.
Your third paragraph is 100%.
People wonder where the term "fake news" comes from or what it means. To me, this is always what it means. But the commercialization of news requires this. If news outlets want to make money, they have to pump up impression estimates to increase cost per unit sale. If they can't meet that estimate, they have to make it up somehow. So you have to sensationalize SOMETHING to pump them up somehow. Storms and crises are the best options.
These run their course, naturally, and you find the next thing when you need it. But the loss of credibility isn't something they really care about. The anchors and reporters care least of all - they are all just talking heads spewing back BS anyway. As long as their pay packet is high enough and their face/name recognition is good enough, they're fine. Credibility isn't something they get too concerned with, usually.
The problem with tracking a hurricane is that it's not science. It's a short term estimate. They are usually good to track a decent course 1 day out. 3-4 days? Good luck. They'll play up the 1 or 2 times they got it right and ignore the 10 others they got wrong. I learned to read weather maps because I was doing pricing for a firm that had to focus on weather to make sure they priced inventory properly in various regions. You'll make as good a guess as most of them if you can read, and that's why (if you see my earlier post) I said the concern was Islip eastward, certainly not west.
As for prep, looks like I'm overprepared, but since I didn't go crazy it doesn't matter. After all, Henri is mostly missing LI now. Center of path is now over Block Island. The reason I felt this was likely yesterday was the maps indicated pressure systems pushing this east, not west. There are lots of factors that have to come into play to push a storm west, size is one, but the other is which systems are sitting to the west and what they are doing.
At the end of the day, it's not really as much a science as some claim. They claim it is, and lots of people go to school to study and become 'experts' at it. What they are really great at is explaining why what is happening, is happening. But predicting weather is different from predicting a big storm. It seems like the same thing, but it isn't. More factors = more complexity. Most standard, everyday, weather patterns are relatively predictable, but the ones that require news coverage, and make more people aware of, are messy.
A good book worth reading about the early days of this is "Isaac's Storm" about the 1900 Galveston Hurricane. "The Perfect Storm" does a relatively good job of updating why modern storms are so hard to predict, but it's really telling a sympathetic story of mismanagement and missing information. "Isaac's Storm" really gets into the details of the early days of hurricane/weather prediction.