Wichita storm chaser Robin Lorenson found herself in Nebraska chasing supercell thunderstorms, and sent me this picturesque photo from that day. It is just one of several images from that day.
Expect gradually clearing skies in the Wichita metropolitan area today, forecasters say, with highs soaring to about 80.
Light southerly breezes will accent the day, topping out in the low teens.
There’s a slight chance of showers late tonight, forecasters say, and better chances for rain on Thursday.
The Storm Prediction Center has upgraded the threat level for severe weather in the Wichita area to moderate.
The National Weather Service in Wichita has issued a “Hazardous Weather Outlook” that states: “These storms may be severe and will move rapidly to the northeast and east. The main threats will be quarter-size hail…60 to 70 mile per hour winds…and perhaps a tornado.”
The Storm Prediction Center has recorded 19 tornado reports so far today in Missouri, Illinois, Ohio and Indiana.
Homes have been damaged, and other extensive destruction has been reported.
Mike Smith, chief executive officer of WeatherData Services, a Wichita-based subsidiary of AccuWeather, will give a presentation titled “Miracle at Greensburg” at the Wichita Garden Show on March 7.
The presentation, which will be at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Century II, tells the story of how more than 200 lives were saved during the most
intense tornado ever observed on radar.
The National Weather Service in Wichita has issued a fire weather watch for Saturday afternoon, when southwesterly winds are expected to gust as high as 30 miles an hour. Combined with low relative humidity, “explosive fire growth potential is likely” across the watch area.
That watch area includes Barton, Ellsworth, Rice, Reno, Harvey, Kingman, Sedgwick, Harper and Sumner counties.
Outdoor burning should be avoided.
The storm spotter training classes for the 26 counties covered by the Wichita branch of the National Weather Service have been set for 2009. They begin next month.
The first one in the Wichita metropolitan area won’t be until March 5 in Newton. The Wichita presentation will be held at Northwest High School on March 10, and El Dorado will host a presentation on March 11.
The classes are free and open to anyone interested in learning more about severe weather.
With winter in full force around Kansas, one phenomenon likely to appear is the sundog. While they can appear several months of the year, sundogs are most common in January, when the sun is low in the sky and ice crystals are common in the atmosphere.
Sundogs typically appear in pairs on either side of the sun and develop when light passes through ice crystals in the atmosphere. I’ve heard some talk of bright sundogs that developed in the Salina area earlier this month, but I have not seen photos.
If anyone happened to capture images of them, I’d be happy to post them on my blog.
…did not translate into a snowbound winter for Wichita, records from the National Weather Service indicate.
In fact, the total for the entire winter was only 16.9 inches – meaning more than half of the snow for the entire season fell on Nov. 8-9.
No one has to remind me how troublesome travel can be over Thanksgiving weekend in Kansas. The first time I ever slid into the ditch was on my way back to Wichita State from a holiday trip to the family farm back in central Kansas in the early ’80s.
I knew the roads would be slick, so I tried to be careful. But I must have been traveling a bit too fast for one of the curves on K-96 east of Hutchinson, because I suddenly started a slow spin as if my car had decided to do a skating maneuver…and I was just along for the ride. The car spun a full circle and came to stop just off the edge of the road.
K-96 was just a two-lane road then, and my car was sitting on gently sloping grass. If anyone had seen me, they might have thought I simply pulled over for a break. I was instantly aware of how fortunate I was – that there was no other traffic on the highway at that time and that my car didn’t flip or hit anything in the ditch.
I put the car in park for a moment to collect myself, then shifted it into low. The tires took hold and I pulled back onto the highway. The rest of the trip passed without incident, but I’ll never forget that little holiday spin.
It’s just one reason I have never taken trips of any consequence for granted in winter.
Be careful out there.