What a Storm This Evening!

We had quite the storm in the Wichita area this evening. Below was the view from my easy chair. It has been my experience that a sky like this means trouble. 

There is no filtering in this image. 

The first line of thunderstorms passed just to our north, leaving a small boundary just to the south of Wichita. That triggered a thunderstorm about 35 miles to our southwest. As the storm tracked northeast across the city, it strengthened and grew. 

The thunderstorm starting to intensify near Conway Springs. 

The thunderstorm broke into two with the strongest part over the northeast part of the city. We had 1/2" hail (the pink on the radar) and wind gusts to about 65 mph at my home. The image above was the reflectivity data from 9:27pm. 

The Wichita Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) showed the speed of winds flowing out of the storm to be increasing rapidly over the northeast part of the city. Below is the TDWR wind data at the time that Jabara's wind instruments, which are on the east side of the runway, clocked an 89 mph gust. 

The wind speeds measured by the radar are averaged over each pixel, so the highest wind shown is 82.8 mph, a bit less than the ground measurement. The TDWR was measuring the wind ~ 500 feet above the ground (due to the curvature of the earth). It was just north of the weather instruments. 

For pilots, meteorologists and others who know the METAR aviation code, the truncated observation is below.

Peak wind gust of 77 knots = 89 mph. The storm also produced a great deal of lightning. 

I'm pleased to note there was little damage from such an impressive storm.