If Wichita residents were surprised by the thunderstorms that popped up over the metropolitan area and dumped rain over the noon hour, they shouldn’t have been.
My story about the arriving heat wave on Tuesday included the following:
There’s nothing unusual about the weather pattern settling in over the Great Plains. These domes of high pressure are common this time of year, she said. They push the jet stream north and deflect weak storm systems away from Kansas.
Scattered, isolated “pop-up” thunderstorms can still form and dump even heavy rain on small areas, she said. But they won’t be enough to provide much relief.
“It’s very isolated and very widely scattered,” Pearce said of any potential shower activity.
How isolated? The official total out at the National Weather Service office next to Mid-Continent Airport was .02. But downtown Wichita was pounded for more than half an hour, so rainfall totals will be considerably higher downtown and elsewhere in Wichita.
The lunchtime storms dropped temperatures about 10 degrees, Pearce said.