I've often felt that east coast storms get undue attention - i.e. Irene from Saturday afternoon on would have been just a normal Thanksgiving Day storm in Oregon or California. We get frequent winter storms with 75+ knot winds and 25+ waves on the coast and 50+ knot winds in Puget Sound or Portland - yet CNN/WeatherChannel is not standing around in the rain showing boats bobbing about on Lake Union in Seattle.

2010 - Tatoosh Island (NW tip of WA) had 8 storms with peak winds over 60 knots and the Cape Elizabeth buoy (15 miles west of Aberdeen) had 3 storms with SIGNIFICANT (Biggest 1/3) wave heights over 20'

I don't think that our weather should get any coverage but it does seem strange that a little wind and some storm surge (we get low pressure storm surge over our salt water road fronts several times a year) should rate dozens of breathless reports trying to make it look serious.

I've been reluctant to post such thoughts so here is a commentary by Dr Cliff Mass - a professor of meterology at the University of Washington. Dr Mass points out that a few years ago we had a 952mb winter storm with 90 knots and no coverage on the national press.

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/

Good luck to all those in the NE - I'm not trying to diminish your problems but the Saturday evening/Sunday coverage from out west seems a little overblown.