I hope not. Late June days rarely come this nice around Wichita: mid-80s, a light teasing wind, wisps of cottony clouds speckling a powder blue sky.
Contrast this, for instance, with the last day of June in 1980. The mercury hit 110 that year, which is the hottest June day in the city’s history. It served as an early indication of one of the city’s most memorable heat waves, but I’ll write more about that later.
For now, savor June’s farewell.
So I was watching the Euro 2008 semifinal between Germany and Turkey late yesterday afternoon when - zap - the live coverage disappeared and ESPN suddenly began showing us crowd shots outside the stadium in Basel, Switzerland.
Lo and behold, a “freak storm” in Vienna, Austria, with winds clocked at 87 miles an hour and heavy lightning, had disrupted the worldwide telecast of a soccer tournament many consider second only to the World Cup. Lightning strikes caused disruptions in the signal, officials said, which prompted the master-control room to reboot.
The bottom line for fans watching the match around the world is that they missed seeing the Germans take the lead late in the match and Turkey tie it up again with just a few minutes to play. The live feed had been restored by the time Germany scored a dramatic late winner to earn a berth in Sunday’s final.
Two people were seriously injured after being trampled as crowds gathered in Vienna to watch the match on large outdoor screens fled the severe weather.
The Union of European Football Associations, or UEFA, promises to have better back-up systems in place to prevent recurrences for today’s second semifinal featuring Spain and Russia, as well as Sunday’s championship match.
As I read descriptions of the storm, it reminded me of so many late spring and summer thunderstorms that have rolled across Kansas this year — and in so many years past. They apparently don’t see too many storms like that in the Alps.
In honor of Lightning Safety Awareness Week, I thought I would dust off the formula you can use to determine how close you are to lightning. A friend and I were debating that equation while watching a recent thunderstorm laden with lightning, and it turns out we were both wrong. Ah, well. At least we were safely indoors.
Here’s the formula, courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory:
When you see the lightning flash, start counting the seconds until you hear the thunder. Every five seconds equals a mile. Divide the total time by five to learn how many miles you are from the lightning.
If it’s 30 seconds or less, suspend all outdoor activities and seek safe shelter. That means the lightning bolt is 6 miles away or less.
If it’s 15 seconds or less, a lightning strike could occur where you are. That means it’s no more than 3 miles away, and from that distance a bolt can arc and hit anywhere within that radius.
There’s also a “30-30 Rule” worth remembering, the NSSL reports. If you hear thunder by the time you reach 30, you are in danger and need to find safe shelter immediately. Wait at least 30 minutes after you see the last flash of lightning or hear the last roll of thunder before resuming outdoor activities.
….and looped around the city of Mulvane.
On June 20, 1942, a strong tornado took a semi-circular path around the city, avoiding what would have been a significant toll on people and buildings alike. I’d love to hear from anyone who was in Mulvane that day about what it was like….
You may have seen this photo on the Internet or in your e-mail box described as the tornado that hit Manhattan and Kansas State University earlier this month. It’s a dramatic image, and it’s a real tornado.
But it didn’t hit Manhattan or K-State.
I typed the words “tornado,” “lightning” and “photo” into Google and the first link offered by the search engine was this very photograph: taken over Lake Okeechobee back in 1991 by a Fred Smith, according to 2006 blog post on a web site called “The Fishin Dog.”
Going one step further, the Manhattan tornado was rain-wrapped, making it impossible to see clearly. If someone sends the shot to you and claims it’s the tornado that hit The Little Apple, e
njoy the image - but don’t buy the story.
You may have seen this photograph floating around the Internet over the past week; a friend of mine e-mailed it to me, and the accompanying text claimed it was the tornado that struck the Boy Scout camp in Iowa.
I was immediately suspicious, you’ll notice the trees and other vegetation in the photograph are standing straight up as if there wasn’t a whisper of breeze.
Jeff Hutton, warning coordination meteorologist for the Dodge City office of the National Weather Service, calls the formation “a very spectacular supercell thunderstorm with a tremendous collar cloud.”
But it’s no tornado.
When meteorologists talk about the active storm pattern this spring, it’s not just hyperbole. Wichita, for instance, has recorded measurable rain on 13 of the last 21 days spanning the end of May and the first half of June.
As we’ve reported previously, Wichita set an all-time record for rainfall in May. It’s also more than an inch above normal for June and more than 10 inches above normal for the year. The average rainfall total by mid-June for Wichita is 13.66 inches, and 24.03 inches has fallen so far in 2008.
More rain is in the forecast later in the week, so the pattern isn’t ready to ease just yet. Umbrellas and sump pumps around Wichita aren’t going to be getting a break any time soon.
It’s a gray, soggy, dreary Monday in the Wichita area, as rain continues to pound down on already sodden soil.
As I listen to the police scanner sporadically report the latest in a line of flood warnings for the region, I’m reminded of a meteorological detail that can be significant but is often overlooked by the public: how fast a storm system is moving.
When it’s a supercell, whether a tornado moving at 30 miles an hour or 60 miles an hour will have a significant impact on how much time people have to get to safety. When it’s a thunderstorm dumping steady rain, the difference between 10 miles an hour and 30 miles an hour can mean the difference between a healthy summer dousing - or flooding.
And on the seventh day, severe weather isn’t resting - or so it would appear. The Storm Prediction Center has the eastern two-thirds of Kansas and portions of Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, Arkansas, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan in a moderate risk for severe weather today.
Accordingly, the National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm watch until 5 p.m. for 50 counties in Kansas (nearly half the state), and forecasters warn that thunderstorms are expected to “explode” into supercells this afternoon along and east of a line from Salina to Newton. That’s basically along I-135 and through the Flint Hills region….
Large hail and damaging winds are the primary threats, the weather service warns in a statement, “but an isolated tornado can not be ruled out.”
The National Weather Service has determined the tornado that struck Chapman in Dickinson County Wednesday night inflicted EF3 damage, grew to a half-mile wide and had peak winds of 150 miles an hour.
A damage assessment team will be returning to the area today, but preliminary research indicate the tornado tracked from near Chapman, through the town of 1,400 residents and on to northwest of Junction City before falling apart.
The tornado killed a woman whose name has not yet been released, and damaged or destroyed about 60 percent of the buildings in Chapman.