Mother nature woke form her long winter nap and decided to punish Oklahoma with a series of long lived tornadoes on March 5-6th. The Wichita area was under the gun for severe weather but for most of the day, the storms remained either on the cold front or in Oklahoma.
Our lone Mark on this map was a one-inch hail report from Butler County, to the west of Wichita.
I'd been watching radar, seeing the mess down in Oklahoma. A couple of small supercells started SW of Wichita and grew. I needed to see some lightning.
This was 6 miles west of El Dorado, looking east toward the city.
With it being night and wind quickly approaching from the cold front to the west, I went back home. There is an interesting little settler's cemetery next to I-135 and 85th street, where I shot this lighting.
It was a warm winter. We had one memorable snow that shut things down for a couple of days.
The average temperature for December, January, and February remained around 45 degrees.
The first snow hit on January 16th, north of town with some strong bands. I liked how this storm stretched over then dumped on the left side.
Our next snow storm, on January 24th, gave us significant snowfall around 7 inches and was made up of dendrites(what people think of as a snowflake and needles). Very cold temperatures followed and rewarded us with a day out of school. My beard froze while shoveling.
Then a dusting came on January 30th.
I wouldn't say Punxsutawney Phil lied when he saw his shadow. The NE has had significant snow this year, just not us.
We're in Solar Maximum. That means the sun is angry. This week we've seen about 3 flares. Tonight was a little powerful.
Multiple flares hit the Earth.
I looked at Facebook and got the notice that auroras were visible in Kansas.
I ran outside and was able to get one with the phone.
We went to the darker part of the neighborhood and could actually see it with the naked eye. A big splotch of red in the sky and a glowing light on the horizon.
The lines you see going horizontal are planes. The vertical ones are called pillars.
We ended up having the third wettest June. 11.5 inches roughly fell in the area getting Cheney Reservoir back to near normal levels.
We had a slight risk for storms and a storm developed north of town. I wouldn't have known except I got a call from a friend wondering if it was safe to drive through. It was a slow moving summer pop up with some high tops on it and seemed very dark.
The storm powered up and the local NWS issues a severe thunderstorm warning for hail and high wind.
The wonky panoramic showed the anvil directly overhead.
The thunder was constant in this storm and showed areas of very heavy rain.
There was a couple of areas of interest but nothing panned out.
I did just get the window replaced on the car and didn't want to chance much so I felt before it hit.
This is about two minutes of the soundscape, birds and thunder.
It's been a wet June. All the spring rains seem to have come this month with a 5.5 inch day on June 3rd and 4th which caused significant flooding in my area.
Then this group of storms that hit, not once, not twice, but with three severe storms on June 17th. We were without power for 36 hours and have possibly lost two of our large trees.
This was the beginning of the wind. Eisenhower Airport recorded a 102 mph wind gust
The moment power went out in the area.
This was the main storm that caused damage in the area.
Interesting enough, this was not the storm heavily warned about. This was a derecho that came down from Nebraska. There was another storm system that could cause more damage.
A little weather trough pushed by the previous storm's outflow gave a moderate area for storms.
I was on tree cleanup most of the day but around 5pm decided to run up to Newton to see an area that was developing. An area near Wichita was coming in but a storm down south looked like it strengthened.
Harper, Kansas had a breif tornado 1 mile SSW of the city but I was a little late getting into the area.
This was on the back end of the storm. Not sure if it was a microburst (strong winds were in the area) or a hail foot.
It dissipated quickly, and formed some fog from the area.
An odd starship looking storm to the west looked interesting.
The air had cooled but it had a good groundscrubber with it.
Lots of positive stroke lightning out of both storms. They seemed to pulse and look like they were getting their act together but neither produced.
One of the local guys stopped to see if I needed help, but recommended The Red Rooster Cafe in Harper for a good bite to eat.
The storm started to fall apart but found a great spot with birds chirping, but the cows were not having this storm nonsense. I would like to introduce the storm cows.
I always start the storm season with . . . It's been a slow year.
Went out noticing a few severe warned supercells nearby. Wasn't ready to see this monster outside of town. Awesome structure, missed us, and didn't produce much other than hail.
There seemed to be some odd rotation on the north end of the storm and I didn't take many screenshots of radar.
Katie Parks was a little closer to the storm and took this from her back yard.
This was taken by Ruminator Sam at the Maize Baseball fields.
We will see what the rest of the season brings. Looks like rain this week and we need it. I miss clouds.
