Under the circumstances, I would think that the models would be redundant and misleading. The people who are directly in front of the hurricane for 200 miles inland need to be doing preparations such as gasoline and food supplies. I remember well how the experts did not think that the Central Florida area would be all that affected by Charley and it is still devastated. The flooding rains, episodic tornados and the surprise that land mass did not disrupt Charly like they thought it would. The models are now very misleading and people are grasping at straws for reassurance that they will not be harmed. All in all, model watching is very interesting from 300 or 400 miles away. It will be interesting when the mayhem is over to find out which models performed consistently well in predicting direction and intensity.