The Storm Fury on the Plains meeting for Sumner County – scuttled by the winter storm earlier this week – has been rescheduled for March 20.
The storm spotter training class/severe weather safety presentation will be held at 6:30 p.m. at Wellington High School.
Sedgwick County Emergency Management has postponed the Severe Weather Safety class slated for tonight in Cheney.
To accommodate the training schedule of the Cheney Fire Department, the class will be held at 6:30 p.m. on April 29 at the Cheney Fire station.
The class scheduled for Tuesday night in Bentley is still on as planned, officials said, but a decision on postponement will be made Tuesday.
I’m slated to attend ChaserCon – the national storm chaser convention – in Denver this weekend.
Are there questions you’ve always wanted to ask a storm chaser but never had the chance? Let me know, and I’ll toss ‘em to a few chasers this weekend.
Sedgwick County Emergency Management has released its schedule of 24 severe weather safety classes to be held in small towns around the county this spring.
The classes are the same course being provided by the Wichita branch of the National Weather Service. The classes are free and open to the public and are expected to last about two hours.
Storm spotter training classes get under way in less than three weeks in the Topeka area.
Here’s a list of the presentations, which are free and open to the public.
The Dodge City branch of the National Weather Service has released its schedule of storm spotter training talks for its coverage area, which includes southwest Kansas and portions of the central part of the state.
They are free and open to the public. Even if you’ve gone to one in the past, I find them worthwhile to see again so you can be kept abreast of new information.
Yes, the snow flurries and temperatures and wind chills remind us that winter is still in full force these days, but spring isn’t that far off.
One reminder of that is the arrival of the schedule for storm spotter training classes in the Wichita area. The National Weather Service has posted its schedule of storm spotter classes on its website.
The first class is Feb. 11 in Sedan and the last is April 11 in Wichita. That final session, along with meetings on April 3 in Salina and April 9 in Parsons, are advanced sessions. Those wishing to go to those talks are encouraged to attend one of the basic talks earlier in the spring.
The “basic” talk for Wichita will be held March 5 at Northwest High School.
The basic talks cover thunderstorm development, storm structure, the features to look for and where to find them. The audience is also taught how, what and when to report information.
Basic severe weather safety is covered in the presentation as well.
All classes are free and open to the public.
More than 3 inches of rain has fallen in parts of northern and western Wichita overnight, spawning thousands of power outages.
Isolated hail – including one report of stones the size of golf balls – was also reported as a potent storm formed in the Wichita metropolitan area and then churned northeast toward Topeka.
“It developed right over us, really, and gave us a good bit of rain,” said Scott Smith, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Wichita.
The northern half of the city generally received between 2 and 3 inches of rain, Smith said.
“There’s probably some isolated 4 inches,” based on what Doppler radar is indicating, he said.
An off-duty weather service meteorologist who lives in far west Wichita reported 3.08 inches. The official rainfall total at the weather service office next to Mid-Continent Airport was 1.17 inches shortly after 7 a.m., Smith said. Jabara Airport in northeast Wichita recorded 1.5 inches.
Some parts of south Wichita and the metropolitan area only received about a half-inch of rain, Smith said.
The strong late-night storms knocked out power to thousands of Westar Energy customers for a short time. More than 4,000 customers were without electricity at one stage late Tuesday night, but the number of outages was listed at 275 at about 7:30 a.m. on the utility’s web site.
The weather service received more than a half-dozen reports of hail in Wichita, Smith said. Most of it was less than an inch in diamater, though one person reported golf ball sized hail 2 miles northwest of downtown – or about 13th and Zoo Boulevard.
More rain is expected periodically in the Wichita area through Friday, Smith said, but at this point no more heavy rain is anticipated.
The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for eastern Sedgwick County and southern Butler County until 3:45 p.m.
A strong thunderstorm was dropping hail as large as golf balls, torrential rains and wind gusts of up to 70 miles an hour. The thunderstorm was moving east at 50 miles an hour.
The storm had knocked out power to more than 2,600 Westar Energy customers in Wichita and eastern Sedgwick County as of 3:15 p.m.
The wind is in a petulant mood, whipping dust up from the crevices of a railroad overpass downtown. Pedestrians have an urgency in their step that belies the bright blue skies.
The reason can be seen off to the northwest – clouds the color of a deep bruise are rolling toward the metropolis, and no amount of wishing can keep them away. In a matter of minutes, the heavens are weeping. The storm has arrived.