Forecasters are working overtime to keep up with the intense demand for storm details, peeking at briefings while they feed their children breakfast and recording updates even when they are off the clock. They are dealing with probabilities but their viewers want precise answers to the same two questions: How bad will Hurricane Dorian be, and where will it head?

[Stay or evacuate? Read more about how Florida residents are weighing their options.]

“It’s like being a witness in a trial,” Mr. Smith said. “You get the same questions a million different ways.”

Mr. Brennan added: “The limitations of the science run up against the demands of society.”

Some hobbyists have been following Dorian practically since it formed about 800 miles southeast of Barbados on Aug. 24, when it was a nameless tropical depression. In the absence of a surefire track for the storm, some amateur forecasters are sharing misleading information online, sometimes by posting an especially severe model as if it were a definitive prediction. The pros have a nickname for the posters: social mediarologist. And they can lead other viewers to then complain to local forecasters, many of whom see responding to their audience as part of their job description.

“Everyone can be a meteorologist nowadays, and I love that,” said Lauren Rautenkranz, a meteorologist at First Coast News in Jacksonville, Fla. “It’s just, we don’t want people to latch onto one specific computer model and think that’s a forecast. It’s guidance.”

[Here are some tips on how to prepare for an evacuation order.]

Ms. Rautenkranz said she had emailed her colleagues this week to remind them to take a breath and not forget that 1,200 more models of the storm’s possible path would be generated before it reached the coast.

Sharon Coldren lives on St. John in the Virgin Islands and said she was more prepared than some other residents because she relied on a website of maps and satellite images in addition to the National Weather Service.

“We start to get a little suspicious, so we watch even more closely,” she said.

Others were less scientific. At a Home Depot in Orlando on Saturday, as families snagged flashlights and struggled with large plywood boards, Marco Angeles said he relied on a burgeoning weather enthusiast: his 11-year-old daughter.