The National Weather Service has issued a flash flood warning for Sedgwick County until 1 a.m.
Radar indicates 1 to 2 inches of rain have fallen in the area, with another 1 to 3 inches possible over the next few hours.
Another flash flood warning has been issued for portions of Dickinson, Geary and Morris counties in northcentral Kansas until 10:15 p.m.
The National Weather Service has issued a new tornado warning for 22 Kansas counties until 3 a.m. Monday, including the Wichita metropolitan area.
The counties included in the watch are: Allen, Barber, Butler, Chase, Chautauqua, Comanche, Cowley, Elk, Greenwood, Harper, Harvey, Kingman, Marion, McPherson, Montgomery, Neosho, Pratt, Reno, Sedgwick, Sumner, Wilson and Woodson.
Reports indicate a tornado touched down briefly a mile or so northeast of Burns in Chase County, and tree damage is being reported in Potwin in Butler County.
I have not heard of any damage associated with the tornado in the predominantly rural area nestled in the Flint Hills.
But that’s very close to the home of the family I wrote about more than a decade ago, in which I chronicled a grazing season for one of the last large, locally owned ranches still operating in the Flint Hills.
The tornado warning for eastern Sedgwick County was issued because of radar-indicated rotation in a segment of the line of thunderstorms that moved through the city shortly after 3 p.m.
No tornado was ever reported. However, because the county’s tornado sirens operate on an all-or-nothing mode, sirens were sounded in areas never under threat for a tornado.
A tornado warning remains in effect until 4:15 p.m. for northern Butler County, including El Dorado. No tornado has been confirmed with this warning, but rotation has been detected in the clouds by radar.
Perry Lambert was tracking the strong thunderstorm that moved from Cowley into Butler County Saturday night and captured an “elephant trunk” tornado after it touched down.
Authorities say the tornado touched down at 200th and Boyer about seven or eight miles east of Douglass and damaged outbuildings but caused no injuries.
Lambert is a law enforcement officer in Cherryvale but knows the back roads of Butler County – and he used that knowledge to get well-placed to capture the tornado with his camera.
This is the kind of day that makes Tornado Alley shudder.
A major tornado outbreak is expected through much of Oklahoma and southcentral Kansas – including the Wichita area.
The Storm Prediction Center has posted a large high risk area covering most of western Oklahoma and southcentral Kansas from western Sedgwick County west to Kiowa County. A moderate risk covers most of the rest of central and northern Kansas, including Wichita.
Among the Kansas towns in the high risk are Kingman, Medicine Lodge, Ashland, Pratt – and Greensburg, which was decimated by massive tornado just two years ago.
The SPC is projecting a 30% chance of a tornado within 25 miles of any point within the high risk zone, and a 15% chance of any point in the moderate zone – which includes Wichita, Hutchinson, McPherson, Salina, Manhattan, Topeka and Lawrence.
Those percentages may seem low, but historically speaking they’re huge for tornadoes, which are rare and need just the right conditions to form anyway.
The tornado threat will extend far past sunset tonight, forecasters warn.
This date is already cemented in Kansas tornado history. A large, long-lasting tornado hammered Haysville, Wichita, McConnell Air Force Base and Andover on April 26, 1991. It was one of 55 tornadoes that touched down that day in Kansas and Oklahoma.
The “Andover tornado” reached EF5 on the Fujita Scale, possessed a track 45 miles long and grew to nearly a half-mile wide. It killed 17, injured 225 and caused an estimated $300 million damage – $62 million at McConnell Air Force Base.
Of the 17 deaths, 13 occurred at the Golden Spur Mobile Home Park in Andover.
A second tornado in northcentral Oklahoma that day may well have been even strong than the Haysville-Wichita-Andover tornado. Known as the Red Rock Tornado, it stayed on the ground for 66 miles and grew to nearly a mile wide.
The tornado leveled two farms and scoured pavement off a highway. A portable Doppler radar measured winds of between 257 and 268 MPH winds inside the vortex.