From what I've read I have to consistently side with Chloe too. Like steal the money from school and stuff but I wonder if I have some leeway and still take the call from Kate in episode 2 or is that gonna cause problems.

... maybe.

My own interpretation of events was that the timeline of Arcadia Bay got altered so much by Max that the Hurricane was a way of calling blank slate on the town and restoring whatever cosmic balance was in play. So it wasn't so much her actually using her powers that was causing the storm so much as the actual changes she started creating since saving Chloe and effectively delaying both her death and Nathan and Jefferson's capture.

I also felt the dream sequence was meant more to bring to the forefront Max's subconscious anxiety of her playing with time as she was already well aware of chaos theory at that point but never really confronted those thoughts or her role in the disaster aside from the one conversation with Warren and even after she was determined to try and save Chloe, it even took Chloe for her to finally realize that the first major event she changed was the catalyst for everything.

Plus I don't really know what more elaboration the alternate ending could have gotten since you're already at the accumulation of your decision to change things destiny where as the sacrifice Chloe ending needed that bit of elaboration to show what the intended timeline we initially missed out on is.

Chloe not reacting to her mom's apparent death odd but then again so is the whole situation so I'm not really sure what an appropriate reaction from her should be, she probably isn't sure either But she did mention supporting whatever decision Max made so I guess that's just her doing that. Least that's the only thing that would make it make sense to me.

Could be they didn't want to spend to much time in the devastation they were kinda responsible for or just didn't find anyone when they drove through town.

I have a bigger gripe with Max just getting the powers to begin with. Like you give a girl powers and a vision I'd assume the powers were intended for preventing the vision from coming true and here it's more like here's some powers and a warning not to use them. So why give them to her in the first place?