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.