The remnants of Tropical Storm Lowell are rewriting Wichita’s record book.
The record for most rain in a 24-hour period in Wichita was 7.99 inches on Sept. 6-7, 1911. As of 1 p.m. today, 8.27 inches of rain had fallen….in just 12 hours. That number will climb, too.
“We’re not done yet” with the rain, National Weather Service meteorology intern Jerilyn Billings said.
Talk about an unwanted record……
The heavy rain that has battered Wichita and much of southcentral Kansas today isn’t related to Hurricane Ike, which is expected to come ashore along the Texas coast early Saturday morning.
“It’s not Ike that got us,” said Chance Hayes, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wichita. “It’s Lowell.”
Tropical Storm Lowell came ashore in mainland Mexico earlier this week, and a stalled frontal boundary draped across Kansas has been tapping into the tropical moisture that streamed northeast from Mexico.
The storm has dropped 6.31 inches of rain on Wichita as of 12:50 p.m., the National Weather Service reported. Another 2.8 inches are forecast for the city through Saturday afternoon. That would push the rainfall total past 9 inches for Wichita.
The long, wet weekend is only just beginning, and flooding is widespread in and around the Wichita metropolitan area. Streets and roads are submerged, flash flood warnings have been issued for much of the metro area – and one look at a rainfall map for the past 3 days shows why:
With more rain expected well into Saturday, widespread flooding would be no surprise.