What a round & more to come

What a crazy morning this has turned out to be. It has basically played out the way we thought with storms firing up in eastern Colorado and moving across the rest of the state through the early morning hours. This is what meteorologists call a "mesoscale convective system" or "MCS" for short. But around 7 a.m. this morning, wind gusts of 80-90 mph were occurring in central Kansas near Ellsworth and Saline counties. Look at the radar image and I've drawn some arrows on here to indicate the counterclockwise circulation on the backside of the complex of storms. An MCS is a system of it's own that takes off and can last for many hours, feeding off of warm, moist air that we've had plenty of in Kansas the last several days. This batch of storms will keep going for awhile as it heads away from our area.

Tree damage in Ellsworth (courtesy Tina Bruning)

Tree damage in Ellsworth (courtesy Tina Bruning)

There was a multi-vortex tornado that passed near Limon, CO last night and 111 mph winds measured in Hugo, C) (which is southeast of Limon) and bad damage reported there too.

So when is the next round coming our way? I expect any of the storms Thursday night to be spotty at best, and the highest chances for rain will be along the Kansas/Oklahoma state line. They really need rain down in Oklahoma, and that's where some of the bigger storms will be heading into the evening and night. I think we can safely say, we won't have a wide swath of storms tonight like we did early this morning.

Future Track at 12 a.m. Friday

BUT.... we are forecasting another widespread event Friday evening into Friday night. Some of the storms will once again have a chance of producing high winds and some hail.

Rainfall reports coming in this morning through 8 a.m.:

Wichita: 0.88"
McPherson: 2.64"
Salina: 1.98"
Goodland: 0.96"
Hill City: 0.96"
Russell: 1.24"
Newton: 0.95"
Jabara Airport (NE Wichita): 1.21"
Hutch: 0.82"
Hays: 1.72"
Dodge City: 0.02"