Whether she's on TV in her T-shirt and jeans or warning adults to wear their bike helmets in the rain, we can't help but wonder what's going on at KCTV 5.  It's like groundhog day all over again every time the wind blows too hard in KC.

We are sure their Super Double-Triple Doplarganger First Alert Weather System costs more money than most people make in a lifetime.  Thus, we can only assume they justify the costs of these aptly named over specked Atari video games by breaking the cost down per broadcast hour.   In our opinion, that can be the only reason we are made to suffer through 3-6 hours of her blather.

We aren't saying she shouldn't be warning people of real severe weather emergencies, but what is it she is doing for those 3-6 hours that can't be done with a small weather map in the corner of the screen and a scrolling text box?  Are we to believe the good people of Chillicothe are sitting in their Lazyboy's watching Katie ramble about the "pink and green" and not in their storm cellars hiding from the "yard missiles" listening to weather radios?

Here's where we have to give recognition to a weather team that does it right.  Fox 4 spent the night dolling out alerts on screen with their version of the small weather map and scrolling text boxes.  They only interrupted programming during commercial breaks.  And even better for us HDTV enthusiasts, they left HDTV programming in it's high resolution format.  Fox 4 is clearly a local station that understands that consumers who have invested thousands of dollars in their home theaters didn't do it to see weather maps in HiDef.

Most of the local affiliates in the Kansas City area, including KCTV 5, operate sister stations where they primarily show syndicated programming and in the case of NBC 41, they even have an all weather station.  Would it be that difficult for Katie Horner to interrupt a rerun of Seinfeld or I Love Lucy on channel 62 and add a tag line to their CBS network programming informing viewers that if they care they can switch over to 62 to watch wall-to-wall Katie?  And if Larry Moore thinks it is so easy for viewers to catch a preempted episode of ABC's Lost online, than why couldn't the reverse be true and viewers who care go to thekansascitychannel.com to have their commonsense questioned by local meteorologists?

We know KCTV 5's Kirk Black claims they are only doing what's necessary to keep their viewers safe.  However, with comments from other meteorologists like, "we are often asked to hype non-storms and continue broadcasting long after a storm has died out," and "no one wants to be the first to stop broadcasting," and KCTV 5's continual cheering of their weather ratings how can we possibly believe that all they care about is viewers' safety. 

We would like to remind Kirk Black, Katie Horner, and the entire KC weather community what the city of Olathe thinks, "A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) All-Hazards Radio is the fastest and most reliable way to receive severe weather watches, warnings and advisories and information about other community hazards."[2]  Perhaps Katie should spend less time talking about bike helmets and yard missiles and more time talking about NOAA weather radios.

Enough is enough!

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"CSI:NY viewers weren’t the only ones pissed off about last Wednesday’s Armageddon Watch coverage on KCTV-5. On the air that night Mike Thompson made point of refuting Katie Horner’s bizarre wolf cry about a tornado in Johnson County." - William Rockhill Nelson