Tornado Outbreak

A terrible cold got the best of me late last week and over the weekend. I missed work on Saturday hoping that sleep and medicine would fight this bug that some how found me.

It is making headlines again, another tornado outbreak occurs southeast of us with more than 20 fatalities reported. The hardest hit area was northeast Oklahoma. Picher, OK suffered some terrible damage from a tornado that hit at 5:30 or 6 Saturday evening. Picher was once a booming mining town with 20,000 residents, but many have been moving away over the years because of a lead pollution fear. The government has been trying to buy out homes in hopes of getting residents to move, and now, this may be their only option. Even though there is substantial damage, the government has made a pledge to not leave anyone behind. There were 6 fatalities in Picher from the storm system.

We have a chance to see some more rain and storms on Tuesday. The severe weather threat should be relatively low for our area. Have a great week! Any school kids or teachers ready for summer?

Stormy Week

This has been a busy week with severe weather here in Kansas and if all goes as planned, we should be able to catch our breath in the next few days. Although we haven't had any tornadoes this week, we have had some amazing hail storms and the pictures that we are getting from viewers are incredible. I mentioned this last night on the FOX broadcast, but it's worth saying again because the attached photos are pretty amazing. Thunderstorms are very dangerous, but they often provide us with some of the best pictures that we will ever get from Mother Nature.

The first picture is from Salina where lightning hit on the golf green and you can see what happened after the electricity traveled through the ground. Definitely not the place to be during a thunderstorm. This was nature's chance at a hole-in-one and she got it.

Lightning struck our tower in Hays, which isn't much of a surprise considering this is a metal rod sticking up in the air. What is surprising is that Chelsey was in the right place at the right time to capture a photo of the bolt.

Strong winds rolled across central and southcentral Kansas on Monday and Tuesday, and we had an amazing shelf cloud that developed in the Great Bend area and rolled all the way down into the Wichita area. It looks like a wall cloud that might produce a tornado, but this cloud feature is much too big and when you see something like this, you should expect strong winds.

Finally, the destructive hail was amazing this week. Garden City had several rounds of severe weather and the hail left its mark. Thanks for sending in pictures and lets hope for some less-active weather for a few days.

Weird May Weather

People have been talking about the unseasonably cool weather that we have been having, especially Friday and Saturday. I'm pretty certain the cooler than normal weather has also helped keep a lid on the severe weather here in Kansas, even though we have had some decent storms lately. There is likely to be more severe weather this week in Kansas, and it could start as early as Monday morning. Tuesday night into Wednesday will be another time frame to keep a watch on things and yes, it will be warmer this week.

I was one of the drivers caught in the middle of the hail storm Thursday night. It hailed for what seemed like an hour, and in some places, the ice started to accumulate in grassy areas. It is some of the larger hailstones that we've had this year in Sedgwick county, but other areas were hit harder with hail and wind. Greenwood county has some significant wind damage from 100 mph winds that rolled through Thursday night.

The sunset picture comes from Colby. It arrived in our Storm Shots email inbox and I wanted to share it with you. Contrails can make for interesting sunsets here in Kansas.



And finally, Millie, after a very long day forecasting weather. Be sure to check out her profile if you get a chance under "Meet the Team" section here at KWCH.com

We are anxious to chase a storm this year, but I'm not sure when that will be.