The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Sedgwick County until 5 p.m.
A severe thunderstorm capable of producing hail the size of quarters and damaging winds of up to 60 miles an hour was located near Goddard, or 13 miles west of downtown Wichita, at 4:19 p.m.
It was moving southeast at 20 miles an hour. Among the locations within the track of the thunderstorm are Wichita, McConnell Air Force Base, Andale, Derby, Haysville, Mulvane, Park City, and Valley Center.
The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm watch until 10 p.m. for 12 counties in Kansas, including the Wichita metropolitan area.
Counties included in the watch are Sedgwick, Harvey, Butler, Reno, Sumner, Kingman, Cowley, Comanche, Barber, Harper, Kiowa and Pratt. Nine Oklahoma counties are also included in the watch.
“A few strong to marginally severe storms will be possible this evening” in the warned area, according to a statement issued by the Wichita office of the weather service.
Hail the size of baseballs, golf balls and ping-pong balls has been reported in Wichita this evening, as a summer thunderstorm quickly fired up and began pounding the city.
So much hail fell in my neighborhood near the Delano neighborhood that it looks like it snowed on my balcony. The stones were so large – as large as golf balls and ping-pong balls, with much of it the size of marbles – they shredded the screen door and pounded the patio door so hard I was afraid it would shatter. I almost had to shout to be heard.
The thunderstorm was moving east, so much of Wichita is going to feel this storm’s wrath.
Dave McElhiney sent these photos taken by his friend Dianne Strange of the thunderstorms that erupted near Haverhill Road south of El Dorado on Monday night.
Kenny Felt, a photographer who lives in southeast Kansas, sent me this photo of a thunderstorm over Fort Scott on the night of June 9. Thunderstorms in southeast Kansas that night produced a pair of short-lived tornadoes, officials said.
Closer to Wichita, Wellington News reporter Teresa Lee snapped this shot of a thunderstorm moving near Derby.
A line of storms is moving through the Wichita as the evening unfolds, bringing with it heavy rain, intense lightning, strong winds and small hail. Several tornadoes have been reported around the state, including Stafford and Butler counties, though no structural damage has been reported.
Winds of more than 80 miles an hour have been reported in the Lindsborg area. These storms are slow moving and could produce prodigious rainfall amonts as they move through.
The Storm Prediction Center has upgraded most of Kansas – including the Wichita metropolitan area – to a moderate risk for severe weather.
Conditions will create “a risk of a few tornadoes during the early evening,” SPC officials warn. “However, the main threats appear to be very large hail and damaging winds as storms organize and track eastward across much of Kansas.”
Maybe Mother Nature has turned shy, with so many eyes locked on the sky.
An almost unprecedented tranquility has descended upon Tornado Alley over the past week, even as a massive research project has been in position to study the development and lifespan of tornadoes and large thunderstorms on the Great Plains.
For only the second time since 1955, not a single incident of severe weather – tornadoes, hail or strong winds – was reported on May 21, according to the Storm Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In fact, the SPC hasn’t issued a severe thunderstorm or tornado watch since May 16. If a watch isn’t issued today or Saturday, it will be the first time since at least 1970 that a watch hasn’t been issued for the week of May 16-23.
Considering that week falls in the heart of tornado season, such a feat would be almost unbelieveable.
The warm, calm weather has been great news for those who enjoy cookouts, camp-outs, boating or hitting the hiking trails. But it’s profoundly frustrating for the crews of Vortex2, the research project deployed to collect information about tornadoes and thunderstorms.
It’s been a case of Murphy’s Law for the Vortex project over the past week, said Amy Buchanan, who works for the College of Atmospheric & Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma and is out in the field with Vortex. Anything that could go wrong has gone wrong, she said.
“Everyone out here is trying to make the best of any weather we can find,” Buchanan said from Hot Springs, South Dakota, this morning. “It is highly frustrating. We have this great opportunity to research all of this, and Mother Nature goes quiet. Right now, we’d just like to see a supercell.”
Weather patterns over the last several days are more characteristic of late summer, said SPC warning coordination meteorologist Greg Carbin.
The jet stream has moved north, taking severe weather threats into the northern Plains – which helps explain why Vortex was in South Dakota.
The weekend forecast for Kansas is consistent with a late summer pattern as well. Thunderstorms are expected to pop up in the afternoon heat, local meteorologists have told me, but they won’t become large or violent because the winds aloft are too weak to feed them. Any storms that do form will die with sunset – just as they do in late summer.
The Vortex crews are not getting anxious quite yet, Buchanan said, because the project still has not reached its midway point. And forecasters say it’s still possible for a more traditional late May-early June weather pattern to return.
“Everyone here is optimistic,” Buchanan said. “You do just need that one storm to get what you want.”
The Storm Prediction Center has upgraded the severe weather threat to a moderate threat for southcentral and eastern Kansas, along with portions of northwest Missouri.
The SPC warns that “persistent supercell threat with possible tornadoes” is possible in central and eastern Kansas through the early evening. The storms could evolve into a line of thunderstorms with strong winds and heavy rain later tonight.
The National Weather Service has posted a graphic showing the anticipated location of severe weather later today. It reaffirms what I was told earlier today.
Hopefully El Dorado and other parts of Butler County still recovering from last week’s derecho won’t be hit too hard.