After every hurricane many or most members of the public are surprised by what happened, but the people at the National Hurricane Center rarely are. The fault can only lie with the bulletins, mechanisms, formats, and media procedures that make up the communications link between the government forecasters and the public. This information gap is, in fact, growing as the number and diversity of media outlets increases. This paper addresses the reasons that emergency information flows poorly through the American media and how the systems and procedures could be improved.