Are meteorologists alarmists?

The short answer is yes! It's always about ratings for the television media. IMHO

I would like to be informed than to be surprised, or not prepared.

On the other hand, they sure got Hurricane Sandy right. What a disaster.

I would never do that! I always rely on how bad knees ache, how many times per minute the crickets chirp, if the birds are flying south, the amount of fur on the caterpillars, and the Farmers Almanac ;-). The high tech stuff and equations are greatly overrated.

Only the guys on television. They have a documented bias towards over forecasting precip. The folks at the National Weather Service are evaluated and they call it like it is.

Well with your background you must agree that this bad weather is all because they keep sending that junk into space. Never had this type of weather until after they launched Sputnik:D