Thursday's weather pattern dangerous

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By Bobbi Mlynar (Contact)

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

An outbreak of severe storms might sweep the Great Plains Thursday, according to predictions from meteorologists in Topeka and Wichita. The potential for a megastorm with tornadoes is great enough that forecasters want citizens to have as much advance notice as possible.

“We’ve kind of dodged the tornado bullet, so to speak,” said Craig Gold, morning meteorologist for ABC Channel 49 in Topeka. “Our luck may run out on us tomorrow.”

Gold said the atmosphere holds all the conditions necessary for exceptionally strong weather events: a strong jet stream overhead, a good supply of moisture being pumped in and a “pretty sharp dry line” that is set to move through the area during the peak-heat hours in the late afternoon.

“Once that dry line moves through with the jet stream overhead, that’s when those storms are going to start to fire,” Gold said.

The storm could produce supercell thunderstorms that are conducive to tornadoes.

“For this time of year, it’s an unusually strong system pulling through,” Gold said. “It seems as if the ingredients are coming together.”

Gold said that the model runs for weather forecasts have been consistent for the past week.

“There’s been not much as far as any deviation from, unfortunately, the doom and gloom scenario,” he said. “It’s something we’re going to have to keep watching. Right now, it’s best to get word out.”

The forecast in a story in today’s Wichita Eagle was more dire.

“Computer forecasting models for the day bear striking similarities to the conditions present on June 8, 1974, when 39 tornadoes touched down in the southern Plains and killed 22 people — including six in Emporia,” The Eagle story reported.

The Eagle story said that forecasters disagree on where the highest risk for tornadoes may be. Mike Smith, chief executive officer of WeatherData Inc., a subsidiary of AccuWeather, said that many are predicting the highest tornado risk will be in Iowa and Minnesota.

Smith’s prediction for high risk of tornadoes was on a corridor stretching from northern Oklahoma to central Iowa, the Eagle reported.

“’Certainly Wichita, Topeka, Emporia, Salina, Chanute ... essentially the eastern half of Kansas should really be paying attention on Thursday,’” the Eagle quoted Smith as saying.

“Temperature and humidity patterns for Thursday are similar to the 1974 outbreak, he said, and a wave of energy in the upper atmosphere is projected to be in exactly the same position as on June 8, 1974,” the story stated.

The 1974 tornado, which grew to about a half-mile wide, had a 38-mile track through Lyon, Osage and Shawnee counties.

In Lyon County, the tornado injured 200 people and caused an estimated $25 million in damage; it struck the Flinthills Shopping Center, the Lincoln Village Mobile Home Park, the Flint Hills Manor nursing home, a small apartment complex, residential neighborhoods and about 10 rural homes in the county.

Channel 49’s Gold was reluctant to compare conditions in 1974 to 2008. Thursday’s weather, however, holds the potential for damage.

“It’s tough to make comparisons from one storm system to another. Is the potential there? Yes,” Gold said. “Can we say for sure where tornadoes will be? No. If we did, then I’d be a pretty rich man.”

He was uneasy, however, about the verbiage from the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center: “long-track strong tornados.”

“And that’s wording we don’t like to hear,” Gold said.

This morning, Topeka’s severe weather forecast had been upgraded to moderate risk, he said, and Emporia’s to “slight risk.”

Moderate risk also remained on the forecast for Thursday, and the forecast for the weekend weather looks good, he said.

Keep radios and televisions handy Thursday night, he said, and “keep your eyes to the sky and keep ’em on us, too.”