Finger on the Weather

A large tornado out in western Kansas. Hail the size of peas and marbles in Wichita. Thunder so loud it could awaken the sleeping.

All this on the day before Veterans Day.

Has Mother Nature rewritten the rules or something? Nah. This is Kansas, after all.

On the same date in 1915, two killer tornadoes touched down in the state. One tornado hit Great Bend, killing 11 people injuring another 75. It was 300 yards wide, had a track 35 miles long and destroyed 160 homes in Great Bend, causing an estimated $1 million in damage.

The tornado killed many animals, too: an estimated 1,000 sheep in the rural areas of Barton County – and hundreds of dead ducks that fell out of the sky 25 miles northeast of the tornado track. They were presumably migrating south for the winter and had settled in at Cheyenne Bottoms northeast of Great Bend.

A second tornado touched down four miles southeast of Peck in southcentral Kansas, carved out a track 16 miles long and 200 yards wide, and struck Derby. Four people were killed and 28 others injured.

The tornado northwest of Johnson City in far southwest Kansas Monday was on the ground for several minutes, National Weather Service meteorologist Marc Russell said. But no damage was reported, and no tornado track was discernible in the pasture land.

Still, Russell said, the tornado should serve as a reminder for Kansans:

“We can have them any time of the year – even in the winter,” he said.