Hail — Rooks, Kansas

2024-03-13 · near Zurich, Rooks, Kansas

Wider weather episode

Mainly between 6-11:30 p.m. CDT on this Wednesday evening, the first strong to severe thunderstorms of 2024 rumbled across predominantly southern portions of this six-county North Central Kansas area, prompting several reports of large hail up to golf ball size within Rooks and Osborne counties. A few specific reports featured: golf ball size stones in extreme southwestern Rooks County; quarter to ping pong ball size hail in the Zurich/Plainville vicinity and also the Natoma area. Following the departure of the main round of convection, a wake low developed along the backside of the trailing stratiform rain shield, prompting a period of strong to marginally-severe winds that affected primarily Smith, Osborne and Jewell counties between 12-2 a.m. CDT on the 14th. In fact, Smith Center Municipal Airport registered a roughly 90-minute period of sustained winds at least 30-40 MPH and gusts 50-60 MPH, including a peak gust of 62 MPH...prompting some area power outages.

Breaking down event evolution/timing, and starting with the big picture in the mid-upper levels, strengthening west-southwesterly flow and upper level divergence overspread the Central Plains, downstream from a larger-scale low digging southward through the western United States. At the surface, North Central Kansas resided along (but mainly just north) of a west-southwest to east-northeast oriented warm front, attendant to a roughly 999 millibar low pressure center that tracked from west central to northeast Kansas during the evening. Given that the warm front resided mainly just south of the local area, truly surface-based instability was held in check (as evidenced by surface dewpoints only peaking in the upper 40s-low 50s F). However, slightly elevated, most-unstable CAPE of at least 1000 J/kg nosed into the southern reaches of the area, accompanied by moderately strong deep-layer wind shear of 35-45 knots. As forcing increased along the low-level frontal zone early in the evening, storms first initiated barely south of North Central Kansas over Trego/Ellis counties between 5-6 p.m. CDT. Then, between 6-9 p.m. CDT, the initial storms morphed into a slow-moving, severe storm cluster that trudged across mainly southern Rooks County into southwestern Osborne County, yielding the various hail reports along the way. Over the next few hours this storm cluster picked up eastward momentum, while slowly weakening and becoming a bit more linear in nature, although thunderstorm wind gusts as detected by various mesonets remained slightly sub-severe before the main round of convection departed the local area out of Mitchell County between 11-11:30 p.m. CDT. Shortly thereafter, the aforementioned wake low winds took center stage within North Central Kansas, but by 2 a.m. CDT the back edge of lingering stratiform rain also departed the area to the north-northeast, ending this concern as well. Following a lull for a few hours, one last gasp of overnight convection occurred between 4:30-5:30 a.m. CDT as another, weaker storm cluster with perhaps small hail traversed mainly Mitchell County before vacating eastward.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (39.2200, -99.3800)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1162456. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.