Officials in Ashland, Kansas, shut down the town’s power supply for a few hours to reduce the threat of fire after multiple power poles were knocked down. Some schools in Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa either canceled in-person classes or closed early. “That record heat is helping feed heat and moisture into today’s storms, increasing their damage potential,” he said.ĭamaging winds were likely to bring down trees and power lines, leading to power outages, the National Weather Service warned. The unusually warm temperatures on Wednesday were due in part to record high ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which wouldn’t have happened without global warming, said Jeff Masters, a Yale Climate Connections meteorologist who cofounded Weather Underground. “We need to be asking, `To what extent did climate change play a role and how likely was this event to occur in the absence of climate change?’” All events nowadays are augmented by climate change,” said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini. “I think we also need to stop asking the question of whether or not this event was caused by climate change. However, scientifically attributing a specific event like this storm system to global warming requires specific analysis and computer simulations that take time, haven’t been done and sometimes show no clear connection. Scientists say extreme weather events and warmer temperatures, much like what’s happening, are more likely to occur with human-caused climate change.
Emergency management director Don Koerperich did not have an estimate of how big the fire was but said “I’m glad it wasn’t near any towns.” Other fires were reported in Russell and Ellis counties. Officials also warned of a dangerous fire risk along the western edge of the weather system, where conditions were dry.Ī wildfire prompted Sheridan County officials to evacuate a few homes near Quinter in northwest Kansas. Butcher said he braced for a major hit but so far the worst damage appears to be a few toppled telephone poles. Greg Butcher, the city administrator in Seward, Nebraska, said he was standing in his office at city hall Wednesday when he saw a giant wall of cloud rolling toward him. Wind gusts of 100 mph were reported in Russell, Kansas. The weather service said an automated observation site in Lamar, Colorado, recorded a gust of 107 mph (172 kph) Wednesday morning. Gusts topping 80 mph (129 kph) were recorded in the Texas Panhandle and western Kansas. The National Weather Service issued a high wind warning for an area stretching from New Mexico to upper Michigan, including Wisconsin and Illinois. The system came on the heels of devastating tornadoes last weekend that cut a path through states including Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Illinois and Kentucky, killing more than 85 people. “But to have this happen in December is really abnormal.”
“To have this number of damaging wind storms at one time would be unusual anytime of year,” said Brian Barjenbruch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Valley, Nebraska. Winds topped 70 mph through much of Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. The National Weather Service said there have been 13 tornado reports in the Plains states, scattered through eastern Nebraska and Iowa. Kansas officials closed Interstate 70 from the Colorado border to Salina, as well as all state highways in nine counties in northwest Kansas. The strong winds whipped up dust that reduced visibility to zero west of Wakeeney, Kansas, the state Department of Transportation said, and caused at least four semitrailers to blow over. (AP) - A powerful storm system swept across the Great Plains and Midwest Wednesday, closing highways in western Kansas, spawning reported tornadoes in Nebraska and Iowa and raising concerns about fires because of unusually high temperatures.