Flash Flood — Chautauqua, Kansas

2024-04-27 to 2024-04-28 · near Cedar Vale, Chautauqua, Kansas

Event narrative

Emergency manager relayed quite a bit of road damage with roads washed out completely north of Cedar Vale due to rapid rises on the Caney River and its associated creeks. At Road 6 and Quivira, a rainfall gauge had 6.4 inches of rain through the following morning, but it overfilled before getting the complete total.

Wider weather episode

On Saturday April 27th, there was volatile severe weather across Kansas and Oklahoma. An abundance of moisture and increasing shear through the day resulted in numerous rotating storms which produced several tornadoes across the Flint Hills into southeast Kansas. The strongest tornado was an EF-2 which occurred in Cowley County which did damage to a few outbuildings. Luckily there were no injuries or fatalities reported with these storms. There are 12 confirmed tornadoes from this event with most of them being EF-U or EF-0. These storms did produce hail ranging from quarter to golf ball size and some damaging wind gusts.

Flooding eventually became a major issue as storms trained across southeast Kansas for several hours into the wee hours of the 28th. Between April 25th and April 28th, many locations across southeast Kansas picked up between 7 and 10 inches of rainfall which sent the Neosho, Verdigris and Fall rivers into flood. Five forecast points rose to moderate flood stage. There was damage to several county roads from the flooding with complete washouts, and part of a railroad track in Wilson County was taken out from water eroding the embankment.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (37.2720, -96.4141)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1176596. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.