Catherine Rusoff
Tornadoes touched down Monday night in rural Oklahoma and large hail struck parts of Kansas as an outbreak of dangerous thunderstorms raised the possibility of strong tornadoes remaining on the ground for many miles.
Forecasters issued a rare high-risk weather warning for both states, the first for Oklahoma in five years.
“You cannot wait to see tornadoes before taking shelter tonight,” the National Weather Service said.
Oklahoma was under a Particularly Dangerous Situation (PDS) watch, the second in just nine days. The PDS clock in the state last month resulted in four deaths and 22 confirmed tornadoes.
At least four tornadoes were spotted in north-central Oklahoma, including one about a 45-minute drive north of Tulsa. The National Weather Service office issued a tornado emergency warning Monday night for the neighboring towns of Bartlesville, Dewey and Barnsdall.
The Weather Service warned that “a large, life-threatening tornado” was headed toward those cities, with wind gusts of up to 70 mph.
Additional tornadoes were spotted in the early evening near the town of Okeene, population 1,000, while another storm in Covington “produced intermittent tornadoes for over an hour.”
The greatest risk of weather damage includes areas in Oklahoma, such as Sulfur and Holdenville, still recovering from a tornado that killed four people and left thousands without power late last month. Both the Plains and the Midwest have been hit by tornadoes this spring.
A dispatcher in Kingfisher County, Oklahoma, said there was a report of tornado damage to a single home, but it was not immediately known if anyone was in the home or if anyone was injured. Across the area, wind farm turbines spun rapidly in the wind and blinding rain.
Meanwhile, hail the size of an apple and 3 inches in diameter was reported near Ellinwood, Kansas, a town of about 2,000 residents 100 miles northwest of Wichita.
The Weather Service said more than 3.4 million people, 1,614 schools and 159 hospitals in Oklahoma, parts of southern Kansas and far north Texas face the most severe threat from tornadoes.
Schools and colleges across the state, including the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City Public Schools and several metro area school districts, closed early and canceled late afternoon and evening classes and activities.
The Oklahoma State Emergency Operations Center, which coordinates storm response from a bunker near the state Capitol, remains activated due to last weekend’s deadly storms, and the state’s public safety commissioner told state agencies to allow most of their workers in Oklahoma to leave on Monday morning.
Monte Tucker, a farmer and rancher in the far western Oklahoma town of Sweetwater, spent Monday putting some of his tractors and heavy equipment in barns to protect them from the hail and warning his neighbors that they can come to his house. home if the weather turns dangerous.
“We built a house 10 years ago, and my stubborn wife put her foot down and made sure we built a safe room,” Tucker said. He said the entire ground floor room was built with reinforced concrete walls.
Bill Bunting, deputy director of the Storm Prediction Center, said a high risk coming from the center is not something seen every day or every spring.
“It’s the highest threat level we can assign. And it’s a day to take very, very seriously,” he said.
The last time a high risk was issued was March 31, 2023, when a massive storm system hit parts of the South and Midwest, including Arkansas, Illinois and rural Indiana.
The risk on Monday in parts of the Southern Plains is the worst in five years, AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter said.
“If you look at a meteorology book on how to cause a significant tornado outbreak in the Southern Plains, all the ingredients you need are here today,” Porter said.
The number of storms and their intensity are expected to increase rapidly at night in western parts of Oklahoma and south-central Kansas, Bunting said.
“The types of tornadoes this storm can produce are particularly intense and could last a long time,” Porter said. “These are the tornadoes that can sometimes last 45 minutes or an hour, even longer, creating paths of destruction as they go.”
The high risk is due to an unusual confluence: Winds gusting up to about 75 mph blew across Colorado’s populated Front Range region, including the Denver area, on Monday.
The winds are being created by a low pressure system north of Colorado that is also pulling moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, increasing the risk of severe weather in the Plains, said Greg Heavener, warning coordinating forecaster for the Weather Service’s Denver area. National. desk.
Colorado is not at risk for tornadoes or thunderstorms, he said.
Dangerous Plains weather will move east, potentially creating overnight hazards in places like Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri, through early Tuesday, Porter said.
“This will not be an atmospheric setup where the sun sets and the storms subside and there will be no additional risk,” noted Victor Gensini, professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University.
The whole week is looking stormy in the US. The eastern U.S. and South are expected to bear the brunt of the severe weather throughout the rest of the week, including Indianapolis, Memphis, Nashville, St. Louis and Cincinnati, where more than 21 million people live. It should be clear by the weekend.
Meanwhile, flooding in the Houston area began to recede Monday after days of heavy rain in Southeast Texas left neighborhoods flooded and led to hundreds of high-water rescues.
