Storms Slam Hodgeman County

Move over, March. May is coming in like a lion.
    With several hard-core storms sweeping into the area, May is certainly earning its name as Kansas' extreme weather month.
    Thursday evening saw storms cutting a wide swath across southwestern Kansas, including heavy-hit areas like Jetmore, said Larry Ruthi, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Dodge City.
    After heavy rains and baseball- and tennis-sized hail thumped the region, busting out windows and damaging roofs, a funnel cloud was reported halfway to the ground eight miles north of Jetmore.
    Ruthi said had there been just a bit more low-level moisture in the air, Hodgeman County would have seen several large tornadoes touching down in the area.
    "As it was, we didn't see the tornado genesis we were expecting," he said. "It's odd for this time of the year to not have more moisture than we do."
    Several power poles were also knocked down in the area, leaving hundreds of residents left without power for several hours.
    Dow Morris, assistant manager of Lane-Scott Electric Cooperative in Dighton, said his company had probably eight or 10 poles down across its entire system, with two or three down in Hodgeman County.
    "Nothing really bad," he said.
    Morris said roughly 300 customers were without power, but Lane-Scott had restored power by midnight.
    Edwards County was similarly hit, Ruthi said, with several power lines snapped, as well as hail damage and reported spots of flooding around the area.
    Ford County was largely unaffected, with small thunderstorms sweeping through the area around 8:30 p.m. Several area communities, including Minneola in Clark County, blew tornado sirens due to low-lying clouds. Ruthi said no reports of tornadoes had come in.
    Kiowa County saw brief rains and nickel-sized hail.
    Although Liberal missed the storms, it was hit by gusts of wind upwards of 70 miles per hour, Ruthi said.
    Thursday's storms came right on the heels of large-scale rains and straight winds Monday, including what local meteorologists say could have been a microburst near Wright.
    A microburst is similar to a tornado, but in a much more concentrated form.
    For a microburst to form, Ruthi said, the rainfall begins loading the updraft of the thunderstorm. The rain overcomes the updraft, then collapses the system, hitting the ground at high rates of speed.
    Ruthi likened a microburst to hitting your fist against a piece of paper. The pressure causes winds to blow out from all angles, with your fist as the center.
    "If you fly over a microburst pattern, you see a divergent pattern where the downdraft hits it and spreads out," he said.
    Snapped power lines and heavy wind damage were reported in the area Monday.
    The chances of similar storms this weekend aren't huge, Ruthi said, although there is a chance thunderstorms will come into western Kansas this afternoon.

Reach Mark Vierthaler at (620) 408-9932 or e-mail him at mark.vierthaler@dodgeglobe.com.