NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center has portions of Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri under a slight risk for severe weather today. The sector of the Sunflower State included is essentially everything east of the Kansas Turnpike.
While forecasters say tornadoes are possible in Oklahoma if the thunderstorms are isolated enough (and thus do not steal energy from each other), the primary threat for Kansas is large hail and strong winds. The threat of tornadoes in Kansas is minimal at best because a “cap” is in place that figures to inhibit the development of strong thunderstorms.
A cap is a layer of warm air sitting atop a layer of cooler air next to the surface. Normally, air rises as it warms up. Clouds form when that warm air reaches upper levels of the atmosphere and the moisture within it condenses. That cap of warm air serves as a set of brakes for the rising warm air, keeping it from breaking through to the upper atmosphere and forming strong thunderstorms.
Caps erode when cooler air reaches that layer of warm air, opening the door for supercell thunderstorms to develop. But forecasters say the cap over Kansas today is pretty strong, shutting the door on the formation of tornadoes.
If you’re one of those folks who believed that March never quite seemed to warm up, there are now statistics to support your suspicion.
The average temperature in Wichita was 45.5, or .4 of a degree cooler than normal, according to data collected at the National Weather Service’s Wichita office next to Mid-Continent Airport.
That’s the same departure from the mean temperature in March for the contiguous United States, according to figures gathered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The average temperature of 42 put 2008 as the 63rd warmest March since national records began being kept in 1895.
Only Rhode Island, Arizona and New Mexico were warmer than average.
Besides being slightly cooler than normal, March in Wichita was also a bit soggier. A total of 3.08 inches of rain fell last month, .37 above the average.
There were 11 days where the overnight low fell to freezing or below, and six days where at least .01 of an inch of precipitation was recorded.
The highest temperature of the month, 74, came on March 20; the lowest, 11, was recorded on March 8.
Some might consider it deja vu all over again.
A storm complex that morphed into a bow echo raked central Kansas overnight, reminiscent of what happened about 10 days ago in Butler County.
Hail the size of golf balls was reported at the Great Bend Airport, and 1-inch hail was reported in the city itself. Winds estimated to be 60 miles an hour were reported at Chase and Lyons in Rice County, and 65 miles near Ellinwood in Barton County early Thursday morning.
Law enforcement officials reported that winds blew down a shed and carried it a block at Windom in McPherson County shortly before 2:30 a.m., and winds of nearly 70 miles an hour were reported at Lindsborg.
Winds also destroyed a metal grain bin at a co-op in Barton County.
“It takes strong winds to do that,” said Chris Bowman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wichita.
Numerous locations in central Kansas reported hail the size of marbles, peas or quarters. No injuries were reported from the storms.
The Storm Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has placed much of central Kansas under a slight risk for severe weather today.
The zone stretches from the Oklahoma border to just south of I-70, and from I-135 west to just west of Dodge City. Among the cities included in the elevated risk area are Great Bend, McPherson, Ness City and Greensburg, which was obliterated by a tornado last May 4.
There’s another slight risk for severe weather in Oklahoma on Thursday. While Wichita can expect showers and thunderstorms tonight and Thursday, temperatures in the 50s suggest it will simply be too cool to promote the atmospheric instability that feeds supercell thunderstorms.
It’s fairly common knowledge that meteorologists use Doppler radar to track the movement of various forms of precipitation.
But the NEXRAD Doppler records everything that is in the air space, and U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist Rick Sojda hopes to use the radar to track the migratory patterns of birds. He’s working with a Montana State University graduate student to develop an algorithm that could detect and track birds.
While the work is still in its early stages, it’s “showing great promise,” said Sojda, who is based at the Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center in Bozeman, Mont.
“The thing that’s driving most of it in the near term is the siting of wind turbines,” he said.
Officials don’t want to install wind turbines along migration paths because that could lead to numerous birds being killed and wind turbines being damaged.
“We have some idea of where those key areas would be, but at the same token we don’t have any quantitative data over the last 10 to 15 years,” he said.
When turbine locations are chosen, “we want to have some data behind it,” he said.
National Weather Service storm data reports indicate that about 78 distinct tornadoes occurred around the country in January.
While that total is far below the record of 212 tornadoes recorded in the first month of 1999, it represents the second-most tornadoes in January since records began being kept in 1950, said Greg Carbin, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman.
Before 2008, the second-most “tornadic” January was 1975
with 52, he said. A total of 50 tornadoes were observed in January 1997.
The 2008 number is still preliminary, Carbin cautioned, so it may change if researchers determine multiple reports involve the same tornado.
Old Man Winter let Goodland and the surrounding area know on Thursday that he hasn’t lost his punch just yet.
More than fivefour inches of snow fell in Goodland and Atwood and four fell in Oberlin and Oakley, according to the National Weather Service. The snowfall brings Goodland’s total for the winter to about 35 inches.
The blanket of white won’t last long, however. Temperatures are expected to climb into the upper 40s on Saturday in the region and the upper 50s on Sunday.
After a gray, chilly week, Wichita is expected to drop below freezing early on Sunday morning.
That news won’t warm the hearts of folks who hoped cold weather was banished to the memory banks. But such a cold snap is hardly unusual for Wichita this time of year, forecasters say. After all, the latest spring freeze on the books in Wichita is May 13, in 1966.
In fact, the average date for the last killing frost of the spring is April 9.
“We are past that, but not by much,” said Jerilyn Billings, a meteorology intern for the Wichita branch of the National Weather Service.
Final tornado statistics for January are in at the Storm Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – and they’re eye-popping.
A total of 84 tornadoes were confirmed around the country in January. That’s four times more than last year and also dwarfs the totals for 2006 and 2005.
The preliminary numbers for February are startling, too: the total of 232 swamps the preliminary number of 87 reported in the second month of 2007. Those numbers typically drop as officials sift out multiple reports of the same tornado (the number of confirmed tornadoes in February 2007, for example, was 52), but SPC officials say this year’s high preliminary total reflects an active storm pattern.
Just 12 tornadoes were reported around the U.S. in 2006, and 10 in 2005.
Meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Wichita are taking a closer look at the bow echo storm complex that hammered the Flint Hills late Monday night and early Tuesday morning.
Like most bow echo storms, this one produced strong straight line winds – at least 100 miles an hour in eastern Butler County, officials reported – and locally heavy rains.
But bow echoes typically form in conditions where there’s warmer air at the ground’s surface and cooler air in the upper atmosphere, said Rob Cox, a meteorologist with the weather service.
With Monday night’s storm, “there was a lot of warmer air aloft, over a cold dome,” Cox said. “This actually penetrated through an inversion.”
“It’s pretty neat – we’re in the process of studying this one, just to see how those winds were able to transport their way to the ground.”
The storm damaged or flattened more than 200 utility poles in Butler County alone and damaged homes and outbuildings in the Flint Hills between El Dorado and Cassoday. Still more damage was reported in Lyon County.