Print Email

By DAVID CLOUSTON

Salina Journal

Sunday night was a wild one for lousy weather, and this afternoon and tonight may bring more of the same, say forecasters with the National Weather Service.

Aaron Johnson, senior forecaster at the weather service office in Hastings, Neb., said a weather front that stalled over Kansas -- roughly from Kansas City southwest to Elkhart -- was to blame for storms that blanketed the area Sunday. Today's Memorial Day holiday forecast promises an additional chance of similar thunderstorms. Cooler weather is expected to arrive Tuesday, he said, pushing the front eastward.

If you had on a weather radio, a police scanner or watched TV on Sunday evening, at times it may have seemed like every county located in south-central Kansas, central Kansas or near U.S. Highway 81 was under some type of severe weather watch or warning.

About 8:45 p.m., the weather service issued a tornado warning for southeastern McPherson County that was to last until 10 p.m., but that was allowed to expire by 8:55 p.m., a dispatcher for the sheriff's office said. Nothing but pea-size hail was reported, she said.

Tornado sirens sounded in Salina briefly about 7 p.m., due to a report by the weather service of a possible tornado six miles north of the city, but the funnel couldn't be confirmed by any of the seven weather spotters deployed in the county, said Dean Speaks, assistant director of Saline County Emergency Management.

"We had a lot of citizen reports about rotation, but we were unable to confirm anything," he said.

Emergency officials and law enforcement dispatchers in other counties reported estimated wind speeds reaching from 40 to 50 mph. Softball-sized hail was reported falling near Scott City.

Decatur County Emergency Management Director Patti Skubal estimated damage from the weekend's storms could top more than $1 million -- there were several homes and outbuildings damaged and the Decatur County Feed Yard sustained damage.

More than a foot of rain fell in parts of the county Friday through Saturday, Skubal said.

At least 3 inches of rain and golf-ball sized hail fell in Lincoln County about 4:45 p.m., said Rod Job, director of Lincoln County Emergency Management. Tornado sirens sounded in Beverly for a short time due to a tornado warning for the area, but no funnels touched down, Job said.

Mitchell County Emergency Management Director Scott Davies said some rural residents southwest of Hunter saw cloud rotation, but there were no reports of damage. There was some pea-size hail in the area, he said.

Russell County authorities reported marble- to quarter-size hail falling in the area. Pea-size hail fell in Mankato, in Jewell County.

In Ottawa County, Emergency Management Director Keith Coleman said it appeared winds in the 45 mph range snapped a utility pole and tossed a garage lean-to over a grove of trees and into a field. Both occurred along North 180th Road, the blacktop highway going to the Ottawa County State Fishing Lake, north of Bennington and south of the lake. By 9 p.m., Minneapolis had about an inch of rain, he said.

Johnson, at the Hastings, Neb., weather office, said wind speeds reported in Cloud and Republic counties reached as high as 50 to 60 mph.

Rob Cox, meteorologist at the weather service office in Wichita, said about 1.1 inches of rain fell in Russell, while Salina reported receiving about 24-hundredths of an inch before 9 p.m.

n Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.

Discuss This Story:

Email this story to a friend:

Subject:

Recipient:

Sender's email (required):



Enter text seen above: