CATEGORY FEH: So, why the big Irene blowup?

BY YESTERDAY morning, a new kind of tropical depression moved over Lower Manhattan - reporters who'd promised viewers that Irene would be the storm of the century, but found themselves standing in what looked and felt like a middling rainstorm.

"Wow, because this isn't so bad," CNN's Anderson Cooper was quoted telling a weather expert after learning that the peak of Irene's mild fury had passed Manhattan. "It's an annoying rain but it isn't even a sideways rain."

If Cooper - as quoted by Toby Harnden, of Britain's Daily Telegraph in a piece calling Irene "the perfect storm of hype" - seemed surprised at the lack of devastation at Battery Park, that was probably because he'd been watching too much CNN.

As the cleanup from Irene's whirlwind weekend visit continues today in Philadelphia and elsewhere on the Eastern Seaboard, the cyclone leaves behind a Category 5 controversy.

Were the hot winds of nonstop media hype more powerful than the actual storm?

You can certainly argue that Irene wasn't overhyped, since the storm caused at least 18 deaths, widespread flooding and power outages for more than 1 million customers. You can also make the case that more people might have died were it not for the unusually expansive evacuation orders and the media coverage that they received.

On the other hand, the nonstop TV hyping of worst-case scenarios even after more-responsible forecasters saw as early as Thursday that Irene would not be a major hurricane caused millions to expect something far, far worse - "the East Coast Katrina," or maybe the water wall from The Ten Commandments - than what showed up.

Longtime media writer Howard Kurtz, now with the Daily Beast, nailed the disparity when he said that although Irene did prove to be a Category 1 storm, causing significant disruption, it received Category 5 coverage into the weekend.

Jason Samenow, chief meteorologist with the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang, which is receiving kudos for its accurate and restrained reporting, said last night that some cable anchors were still reporting that Irene could strike New Jersey and New York as a major hurricane long after his team determined that it clearly was weakening.