Clearly Mother Nature does not consult the television listings. Had she done so, she would have known to hold off Kansas City's winter spectacular for 48 hours until the Nielsen ratings period began. As it was, the weather forced local TV stations - already socked in by a lousy business climate - to pre-empt network programs, call in extra staff and expend resources they had little hope of recouping to bring the storm's full scope to viewers - at least those who still had power. KMBC, Channel 9, lost a microwave dish to a low-hanging power line. KCTV, Channel 5, lost power at its Fairway studios, forcing anchors to work with flip charts and handheld mikes. Through it all, the three longtime pillars of Kansas City television - including WDAF, Channel 4 - were calm and comprehensive in their reporting of the weather and its impact. As usual, Kansas City's senior weathercasters, KMBC's Bryan Busby and WDAF's Mike Thompson, were the most authoritative and least ruffled as the storm droned on. Of course, there also was a certain amount of salesmanship going on. As any station manager in the country will tell you, viewers consistently rank the weather as the No. 1 reason they watch the news. By Tuesday, it was obvious that weather would be the lead story for many newscasts to come, even if the story was that there was no story. "Kansas City will get hit by an ice storm - but when and how much?" said Brian Curtis on KCTV. "It could be just a massive storm," said Gary Lezak, the often excitable meteorologist at KSHB, Channel 41. But it wasn't a massive storm Tuesday, not yet. So reporters were dispatched to report on frozen windshields and snowplow crews. On Channel 4, reporter Sean Conroy stood by an interstate and spoke that familiar if useless broadcast mantra, "Obviously, folks, if you don't have to go out, don't." Then, as if from heaven, came word of the Amazing Magnesium Chloride Dispensing Bridge. In case you missed the story, and it's hard to imagine how you could, the city of Lenexa recently installed nozzles into the College Boulevard bridge over Interstate 35 that squirt the ice-melting compound onto the roadway. City officials can trigger the Amazing Magnesium Chloride Dispensing Bridge just by calling it on the phone - "even a cell phone!" enthused KMBC's Bev Chapman. An intrepid publicist for Lenexa managed to get the bridge on all four TV newscasts. (We eagerly await the follow-up report on what magnesium chloride does to your car's underbody.) But by Wednesday morning, stations were mostly reverting to their regular schedules, and here Channel 4 picked up a decisive advantage. Fox 4 frequently reminds viewers to tune in to its weathercasts "when seconds count!" But this week it was the hours, not the seconds, that counted most as WDAF's eight hours of daily local news made it a reliable font of information. By late Wednesday morning, KMBC had started to break into regular programming with weather updates, and KCTV soon followed. By evening, when the night air popped with the sound of falling timber and flashed with electrical sparks, the newscasts took a turn for the dramatic. "It is a brutal night on the streets," said KCTV's Dave Helling. Brutal inside Channel 5, too. The station lost power during William Jackson's sports report and then again just after 8 a.m. Thursday. The morning crew scurried into the station's garage, where they kept going with emergency power. With no graphics machines and no wireless microphones, the broadcast took on the ambiance of a 1960s telethon. Still, KCTV made the right call in pre-empting the CBS "Early Show" for local coverage. KMBC also pre-empted "Good Morning America" Thursday to compete with WDAF's all-local morning show. And all three stations began at 4:30 a.m., where Channel 5 has been doing an ultra-early newscast since December. Curiously, KSHB chose to end its local coverage at 7 a.m. and air the "Today" show as scheduled. News director Laura Clark pointed out that there were important national and international stories, too. "We put our resources into our 4 o'clock news," Clark said, referring to the special 4 p.m. newscast Channel 41 aired Wednesday and Thursday. There are many ways to describe a complex meteorological system, and viewers got an earful of descriptions during this week's barrage of ice, freezing rain and snow. Perhaps the oddest came from Bob Collins, the city manager for Kansas City, who told KCTV's Helling that this was "a routine snow and ice event." Maybe it was when the interview took place, but not by the time it aired Wednesday evening. Early on, Fox began calling it the "Winter Blast," complete with "Winter Blast" graphics. This air of frivolity seemed inappropriate to a potentially deadly storm. KCTV's "Ice Storm 2002" was more restrained, but why give it any name at all? Visually, the weather was a godsend to broadcasters. All four newscasts were awash in dazzling weather maps and shocking video of falling branches, skidding cars and sparking utility lines. There was footage of what looked like lightning but, we were told, was actually the light of an exploding transformer. Channel 4's Thompson described the system as a "conveyor belt of tropical moisture," a felicitous phrase. Thompson and Channel 9's Busby were the eye of the storm, patiently detailing the miserable conditions without once raising their voices. As has become customary, all four local stations shrank their regular programming and showed school and government closings at the bottom of their screens. To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com. @ART CAPTION:KCTV meteorologists Gary Amble (center) and Bruce Thomas describe conditions during a live shot at noon Thursday along Shawnee Mission Parkway. @ART CAPTION:KCTV 5 noon anchor Carolyn Long prepares a script for the noon newscast Thursday right before airtime in the station's lobby. @ART CREDIT:TIM JANICKE/The Kansas City Star @ART CAPTION:Scenes from ice storm-ravaged neighborhoods made for compelling video. @ART:Photos (3, color and b/w)