WICHITA – The final day of August will be unseasonably cool for the Wichita area, forecasters say.
Highs should only reach the mid-70s under mostly sunny skies. That’s about a dozen degrees below the average high for the end of August in Wichita, National Weather Service records indicate.
Winds will be out of the east, but should stay in single digits today, forecasters say.
Lows tonight will dip to the mid-50s, and highs on Tuesday should reach the low 80s.
Brad Souder of KJCT-TV in Grand Junction, Colo., shared this about life in the Rockies in mid-August:
“Western Colorado is pretty sweet this time of year. We just had a big peach festival this past weekend, President Obama was doing a town hall and while I was at the peach fest Michelle and their two girls showed up. Next month is the Colorado mountain wine festival in Grand Junction. Temperatures in the 80’s in the afternoon, and 50’s at night with very low humidity makes it feel great. Leaves start changing in the mountains latter this month and peak next month. ”
Hmmmm. Where’s my road map for Colorado???
Amy Freeze, a meteorologist with the FOX affiliate in Chicago (and a fellow alum of the “Understanding Violent Weather” conference in Norman), posted this blog item on unusual winds in Chicago on Twitter recently.
It mentions Dodge City, and you’ll see why.
Denise Isaac was working in Washington, D.C., when I met her at the “Understanding Violent Weather” conference in April. She has since joined WeatherNation in Excelsior, Minn., a suburb of the Twin Cities.
She sent me this report a few days before a tornado struck Minneapolis:
“This summer has been one of Minnesota’s coolest summers of all-time. It is my first, but everyone kept saying, ‘It is never this cold here in July.’ Our first 90° day this summer was around August 12th… July 2009 was the 2nd coolest in weather history in the area and the tornado season also started out late. Normally the Twin Cities/Chanhassen NWS issues its first tornado watch/warning in May, but this year we didn’t have one until the end of June so it has been a slow severe weather season around the area.”
While I’m off this week, I asked journalists who attended the “Understanding Violent Weather” conference in Norman this spring to share what the weather’s been like in their corner of America.
Mike Prager of the Spokane Spokesman-Review sent this:
“All of the fishing folks in this region are excited about a big run of salmon and steelhead on the Columbia River this summer. Here is a link to the fish cam at Bonneville Dam to the east of Portland. The smaller, sleeker ones are steelhead. The bigger ones are likely chinook (or kings).”
He went on to say that when he went fishing off the mouth of “the Big C,” or Columbia River, “and the coho (silver salmon) were crazy everywhere. Lots of birds, including pelicans, and a few dolphins and gray whales. The inland weather has been hot and mostly dry. We got some rain last week to dampen the fire threat. Fire season hasn’t been too bad. No one hit by lightning here, but we did get some small tornadoes, outflow winds and funnel clouds earlier in the season.”
Last week’s rainy weather reminded me of the recent day when I heard Clint Black sing “Like the Rain,” and found myself pondering how many songs over the years have featured weather as a key component for the song.
Weather in music seems to cross genres effortlessly. Consider Dan Fogelberg’s classic “Same Old Auld Lang Syne” or the Allman Brothers’ “Bad Rain” or the Eurythmics’ “Here Comes the Rain Again” — or even The Beatles and “Here Comes the Sun.”
What are some of your favorite songs that feature weather as a key component of the story line?
Wichita may set a record low overnight, forecasters say.
The current record is 56, set in 1961, and the National Weather Service is predicting an overnight low of 57 for Wichita.
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility,” meteorologist Kevin Darmofal said. “We’ll be close.”
Friday’s low was 56, though that did not set a record for the date.
Russell could set or tie its record low for Aug. 22. The forecast of 52 would tie the record set in 1966.
The damage assessment team from the National Weather Service office that covers the Twin Cities rated the tornado that touched down in Minneapolis as an EF0, with maximum winds of between 75 and 85 miles an hour.
The tornado touched down at about 1:50 p.m. in south Minneapolis, then moved virtually straight north toward downtown before lifting near the Convention Center at about 2 p.m. The track was about 4.5 miles long, with a maximum width of about 500 yards – though the most intense damage occurred along a path perhaps 250 yards wide.
Here’s a map of the track, which I find remarkable for how straight it was for most of its length.
There were 28 tornado reports on Wednesday in six different states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin.
WICHITA – Some patchy fog is possible in south-central Kansas early this morning, forecasters say, but then it will burn off and the rest of the day will be sunny and pleasant.
Sunny skies, a bit of breeze and highs in the low to mid-80s are expected today in Wichita. Winds will be out of the north, ranging from single digits to gusts of around 20 miles an hour.
Lows will dip into the 50s, and then the weekend will see more sunny skies and highs in the mid-80s.
Denise Isaac of WeatherNation in Excelsior, a Twin Cities suburb, alerted me to this video of the tornado that struck Minneapolis yesterday.
A storm damage survey team from the National Weather Service was still working its way along the damage path today, and no Fujita rating had been assigned as of early afternoon.
However, the agency’s Web site posted this description of the track: “It was a tornado which touched down in south Minneapolis, initially near East 53rd and Park Avenues. The tornado then moved north from that location toward downtown, and lifted near the Minneapolis Convention Center. The most intense damage was found along and near Portland Ave between East 45th St and 43rd St. Numerous trees were downed in this area, with damage to a number of homes as well.”
You may be wondering why I’m sharing information about a tornado that hits in Minnesota. It’s another piece of evidence that dispels the myth that tornadoes won’t hit the downtown area of a major metropolitan city.