Holy Hail!!

As the storm clouds started building over southcentral Kansas on Wednesday, people at the Kansas State Fair were concerned they would be swept away in a tornado. The Storm Prediction Center issued the tornado watch at about 3 p.m. and it didn't take long for storms to start dropping tremendous hail. Fortunately, there were only a few tornadoes reported, and despite being in a populated area, no reports of serious injuries or major damage.




I'm posting a picture of what looks to be one of the weak tornadoes reported near Haysville, and there is a map that shows the hail swath from south of Hutch, all the way down into Cowley county. Along the path, several reports of baseball and softball size hail. The storms were extra hard on Goddard and Winfield, with 80 mph winds reported in Winfield at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday evening.

In many ways, we were lucky that we didn't have tornado warnings on the fairgrounds, and also that we didn't have any widespread damage from tornadoes. But I'm sure some roofs will need repair in the wake of Wednesday's madness.