I grew up in South Florida. As I child, I remember that our concern about hurricanes only arose if there was a storm heading in our direction (to this day, I remember sitting at the dining room table with my brother, plotting hurricane coordinates on a map cut out from the front of a brown Publix shopping bag, trying to guess the most likely path for an approaching storm).
Driving home yesterday, there was a story on the news asserting that Hurricane Katrina has led to increased concern and preparedness for the 2006 Hurricane season which starts today. The chart below is a search term breadth chart showing searches for all terms containing “hurricane” over a fifteen month period.

If we assume that search term data provides us with insight into societal concerns, we see that peaks in hurricane related searches only occur immediately before and after the hit of an approaching storm. If the news story assertion were true, I would expect to see an elevated level of searches as we enter this year’s season. The trouble is; based on our search term data, society really hasn’t changed since my childhood map plotting days.