Thunderstorm Wind in Smith County, Kansas

A wind gust of 61 MPH was measured by a mesonet station located eight miles north of Bellaire.

The vast majority of this six-county North Central Kansas domain was spared a severe thunderstorm threat on this Friday afternoon-evening, as the main swaths of severe activity focused only slightly off to the north-through-east and also west-through-south. However, there was one brief exception around nightfall as a southeastward-tracking supercell invaded the Sunflower State out of Nebraska, impacting mainly northeast Smith/northwest Jewell counties before rapidly weakening. All local ground-truth storm reports emanated from northeast Smith County, including a 61 MPH wind gust several miles north of Bellaire (unofficial mesonet) and ping pong ball size hail just north of Lebanon.

Taking a closer look at event evolution and timing, in the big picture of the mid-upper levels there were no strong/distinct disturbances in play. However, broad west-northwesterly flow strengthened in response to a subtle/low amplitude wave drifting out of Wyoming into Nebraska during the afternoon-evening. At the surface, low pressure gradually intensified over northwestern Nebraska over the course of the day, positioning northern Kansas within a broad warm sector featuring steady south-southeasterly breezes and dewpoints rising into the mid 60s F. Initially, during the early-mid afternoon hours, scattered, non-severe convection rumbled from west-to-east across much of North Central Kansas. Meanwhile, well off to the northwest, a handful of intense, supercellular storms erupted over central/southwestern Nebraska. As the evening wore on, this Nebraska convection gradually advanced toward/into northern Kansas. Between 8-10 p.m. CDT, southern Rooks/Osborne counties narrowly avoided trouble as a cluster of severe storms passed just west-through-south of the area. Then, between 9:45-10:45 p.m. CDT, one of those long-lived Nebraska supercells crossed the state line into Smith/Jewell counties, yielding the aforementioned severe wind/hail before weakening and exiting eastern Jewell County shortly after 11 p.m. CDT (ending the North Central Kansas storm threat for the night). Around the time of the Smith County wind/hail, the mesoscale environment was very supportive of severe weather, featuring mixed-layer CAPE around 2000 J/kg and effective deep-layer wind shear of 40-60 knots.