6/26/2009
GARY DEMUTH
A summer storm that hit Salina and Saline County Thursday night resulted in heavy rain, golf ball-sized hail, high winds and lightning that caused nearly 2,000 homes in south Salina to lose power. According to the National Weather Service in Wichita, a slow-moving isolated storm system moving from the northeast through central Kansas reached Saline County about 7 p.m. Thursday. High temperatures in the area, which reached 103 degrees earlier in the day, caused the atmosphere to become extremely unstable, said Chris Jakus, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wichita. “When it gets that hot, there’s just enough focus for the storm to fire with the heat to produce hail and high winds,” he said.
Read the rest of this story in Saturday's Salina Journal.