New Orleans ? An hour after city officials opened shelters, warned of possible power outages and urged calm ahead of a threatening tropical depression, the system moved inland hundreds of miles away, and forecasters canceled the tropical storm warning that had authorities on alert.

Under partly cloudy, pale-blue skies Saturday, some in this city devastated by Hurricane Katrina two years ago wondered if it was a bit much.

“I can understand them taking precautions and all,” Gus Paschos said over coffee at a French Quarter shop. But he said the preparations and news coverage surrounding the unnamed storm system were “ridiculous.”

“People are overly sensitive since Katrina,” he said. “People are scared.”

After the storm and levee breaches that left 80 percent of New Orleans underwater, all levels of government were criticized for their preparation and response to Katrina.

For several days this week, weather reports on local newscasts keyed on an area of low pressure that, on Friday, became Tropical Depression No. 10 – and, potentially, the region’s first major brush with tropical weather since hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which hit in August and September 2005, respectively.

The system also developed the week after Humberto morphed from tropical depression to hurricane within just 18 hours. Humberto affected parts of the state after making landfall in Texas and “served as a wonderful lesson,” said Mark Smith, a spokesman for Louisiana’s office of emergency preparedness.