While I certainly feel bad for people on the Florida-Alabama border as category 4 Hurricane Dennis comes ashore, it is odd to compare the coverage of different press organizations, as to English or metric units, especially when all three are on Yahoo at the same time.

AP: English only: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050710/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_dennis;_ylt=Aplfw.HZGzwMtCcdyJeZPfOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-

Reuters: Dual, English/metric: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050710/us_nm/weather_dennis_dc;_ylt=Apmr6IwILNTUlwpPdmfnXhes0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-

AFP: Dual, metric/English: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050710/ts_alt_afp/usweather_050710181304;_ylt=AuWn_Sw.lAeyWKOCwT7KHoKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-

The stories have slightly different time stamps so the figures may not agree as hurricane are dynamic.

I haven't looked at any of these reports, but technically windspeed in metric should be given in metres per second for meteorological purposes. If newspapers and news agencies are reporting a hurricane's windspeeds in kilometres per hour they are technically wrong. In imperial the technically correct way to express windspeed for meteorological purposes is in knots, or nautical miles per hour, (statute) miles per hour are also wrong.

Rip,
If you are using the windspeed to calculate forces, you are correct, it should be m/s. However, even most meteorological organzations (NOAA and NWS) use km/h in thier metric version. Probably because aviation prefers that and airport weather is one of their most important products and where most measurement gear is set up.

The METAR format for aviation weather requires the units for wind speed to be denoted, and allows:
KT knots
KMH km/h
MPS m/s

US METARs only use KT, I'm not sure of the practice in other countries only what the format permits. I did however stumble across Hong Kong. They use KT for wind, but they use hPa for altimeter setting (Q) rather than inches HG (A). Does Australia require MPS?