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'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 have to applaud the HRRR system for nailing this storm. There was a couple brief tornado warnings near Wichita due to radar indicated rotation. Lots of lightning and around 1 inch hail.
Possibility of storms later today.
Thunderstorm initiation around 3pm.
Brief wall clouds and lightning
Mammatus clouds show turbulence in the atmosphere.
Crepuscular rays as the sunset shines through the clouds.
