By KSN Chief Meteorologist Dave Freeman

I suppose the caller thought he was being clever: "I see there's a storm in Kay County, Oklahoma. Did you know it was raining in California? Why don't you put that on the TV?" CLICK. He hung up. It was 11:30PM, and a Flash Flood Warning was in effect for our neighbors in Kay County--the Ponca City area. Since that fellow hung up, I didn't get a chance to explain to him why I cared about Ponca City and Kay County. So now, gentle reader, you get to read the explanation I would have been happy to share with that fellow had he given me the courtesy of allowing me to reply.

Many people do not realize that KSN stands for Kansas State Network, and that KSN is actually a network of four full-power TV stations: Wichita, Great Bend, Garden City, and Oberlin/McCook, NE. This means that folks in 77 counties in 3 states and 2 time zones trust the KSN WeatherLab to protect their families during severe weather! From Dundy County, NE; to Texas County, OK; to Chautauqua County, KS; to Geary County, KS, folks turn to KSN! Just as people in Wichita consider us "the local weather guys," so do folks in Benkleman, Guymon, Sedan, Junction City and hundreds of other communities across this huge viewing area!

So, yes, I do care when a Flash Flood Warning is effect in Ponca City! (Never mind that flooding is the #1 severe weather killer--I would have mentioned that to my clever caller had I had the chance.) We really do try to cover severe weather in all 77 counties as if our grandmother lived there. This raises some tough questions, of course--balancing the need to get critical severe weather information to folks while understanding that others who are not affected simply want to watch their favorite programs on NBC and KSN.

The KSN WeatherLab Team uses a number of different strategies to cover severe weather, ranging from our StormTicker to full blown continuous coverage. While always interrupting immediately for bulletins, we do also take advantage of commercial breaks to bring updates without affecting programs.

We also have the ability to split our KSN feed to provide custom coverage to the various parts of the state. We cannot always do this--sometimes storms are affecting a wide area, or an area where some folks see one KSN signal while others see another. But, whenever possible we try to do this. This has important implications for the growing number of folks turning to satellite TV across the viewing area--please make sure and read my previous column on this issue.

We have learned that there is no way to please everyone on this issue. Many times we will get phone calls or emails from one group of people furious with us for interrupting a program immediately followed by others from people furious because we were not doing more coverage of THEIR storm. Sometimes I have wished for a way to lock all of these people in a room until they could work out what I should do! But in the meantime, we have to do the best we can to care for each and every family across this huge area.

I hope that you will kindly remember this as we go through these stormy nights. And, if you happen to run into that fellow who called with the wisecrack about California, invite him to call me back. I would be very happy to explain all of this to him in person--on a quiet night with no storms to watch, of course.

Dave Freeman
KSN Chief Meteorologist
weatherlab@ksn.com