Surely, the weathermen of the world hold some sincere remorse here for a situation that alarmed the mid-Atlantic, sent parents scurrying to retrieve their kids, grounded hundreds of flights, and disrupted daily life for millions of people. But the abject tenor of some of the apologies, following the ominous buildup about the prospect of destructive tornadoes, has become its own minor storm system. When a threat looms and throngs of forecasters and weather fans—some highly credentialed, others less so—all weigh in online, the incentives to make both the forecast and the failings dramatic go up. In the attention economy, who wants to tune in for un-extreme weather?