Sunday's NBA, PGA Reports Impossible: Inclement Weather Shuts Down Charlotte TV

On Sunday, for the third time in four days, weather suspended the programming of the three major television networks—ABC, NBC, and CBS. 

No problem, right?  We've all got cable with a million channel options and nobody really watches the network broadcasts anymore. Therein lies the problem: of the three days they decided to suspend programming, Thursday and Sunday were two of them. 

With the loss of Thursday we missed The Office and Lost, which in and of itself was bad enough. But then Sunday afternoon Charlotte made the worst decision in weather history. They cut away from not only the TPC at Sawgrass, but also the Lakers at Jazz game. 

Now I know all of you in "normal" markets are thinking "We get weather advisories all the time for blizzards, tornado sightings, hurricanes, and floods." But the weather event responsible for the suspension of programming was none of the above. The weather event was a series of thunderstorms.

Nothing more, nothing less. And these weren't breaks in coverage; here in North Carolina we do our weather BIG.

By big I mean cutting into coverage not for the two or three minute updates every 15 or 20 minutes. I'm talking three straight hours of storm coverage with weather buffs Chris Suchan and Larry Sprinkle.

The latter rolled into the station from home donning the latest in the Paul Bunyan Flannel spring collection.  He looked like he fell off the set of a Seattle grunge band video shoot circa 1994. 

Being the concerned citizen that I am, I watched the coverage only to discover that there were sparse sightings in Lincolnton, NC. Never heard of it? Don't worry you're not alone. No one in Charlotte could find it without our Acu-Weather First Warn Doppler radar, either.

Well, it's a tiny town about an hour or so away from the megalopolis that is Charlotte, NC. These yahoos were reporting, and I quote, "golf ball to baseball sized hail." Chris Suchan's advice for those without carports or garages?  Get in your car and try to out-run the storm. 

Another thing that baffled me as I watched this coverage—the use of the newest phrase in meteorologists' lexicon: "funnel clouds." Not tornadoes or tornado sightings, these are clouds shaped like funnels, looking a lot like they could be somewhat similar to a tornado. Awesome.

With all of the weather hullabaloo surely it was raining in Charlotte, you say? Absolutely not.

It was a great Carolina blue skies type day. Sports decided to work with the weathermen to only infuriate us more as they decided to go the distance and then some.

That's right my friends, a playoff at the TPC and overtime for the Jazz game.  It was like taking a gut punch from Tyson while the Undertaker kicked you in the balls from behind. The Double Whammy. 

On a good note, my WGN was still going strong and I was privy to the great Tony Romo debacle. To comment on that, every self respecting person in America should know all the words to "Take me out to the ball game." It's like "Happy Birthday," for Pete's sake. And if you can't sing, don't act like you can.