Like the majority of East Coast residents, I turned on the television Sunday morning to see how far Hurricane Irene had churned northward overnight. Flipping through stations from the Weather Channel to all-day special reports on local channels, I couldn’t help but think what a carnival the storm had become. From the Carolinas to the Chesapeake to the Jersey Shore to New York and the Cape and Islands, reporters in rain gear were standing — sometimes in wind-whipped rain and sometimes under partially sunny skies — in front of the most camera-friendly storm-related damage they could find: a downed tree (or more probably, tree limb), moored boats being buffeted by white-capped waves, foolish sightseers challenging Mother Nature. All this for a Category 1 hurricane that had weakened to a tropical storm by the time it hit my neck of the woods. Don’t get me wrong: I feel for the people who lost property and suffered flood damage, but the show is getting out of control. Storm reporting has become less about safety and more about entertainment. Through it all, I couldn’t help but think of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, the fable about the shepherd boy who repeatedly tricked nearby villagers to come to his rescue by calling out that a wolf was attacking his sheep. Then, on the one day when a wolf did come around to attack his flock, his cries for help went unanswered because the villagers assumed it was another one of his tricks. That’s how I feel about this shift to storm-reporting-as-entertainment. Someday we’ll be lined up like candlepins in a bowling alley as a dangerous hurricane barrels towards us, but we’ll ignore the warnings assuming it’s just another opportunity for on-air reporters to squeeze in a little extra face-time. In the meantime, consider this: Tropical Storm Katia strengthened into a hurricane over the Atlantic yesterday. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Katia is forecast to become a “major” hurricane with winds over 111 mph by the weekend. Long-range computer models show Katia nearing Bermuda in about a week. Some models show it turning north — away from the East Coast. I guess that means that in about a week, we’ll know better if Katia is going to cycle over Bermuda. And a few days after that, we’ll have some ideas as to whether or not it will head out to sea or stick close to the coast. Maybe I’ll go turn on the television to see if any stations have posted their storm-watchers at the beach watching for rogue waves that might herald the potential arrival of our next storm. — Lisa Matte, editor in chief