Radar: A 73 dBZ Beaut in Kansas

UPDATE: If you can believe it, there has been a SECOND report of three tornadoes merging into one, from a DIFFERENT county in Kansas than mentioned below: "7 MILES N OF IOLA, KS IN ALLEN COUNTY: 3 TORNADOES COMBINED INTO 1 WEDGE" This makes 6 tornado reports so far...

At 8:00 Central Time, a Flash Flood Warning has been issued for Kansas City and the track of the line of storms heading towards it. Parts of Kansas City have already seen over 2 inches of rain from the storm, with parts of eastern Kansas suffering under more than 3.5 inches. I have uploaded some raw radar movies of tonight's storm to this location.

ORIGINAL POST:

At 7:00 Central Time, we have a beaut of a storm in east-central Kansas, as seen by AccuWeather.com RadarPlus. Check out the Kansas City radar on AccuWeather.com (PREMIUM | PRO). This piece of nastiness is gauged at 73 dBZ (extremely high) and has let loose around 700 lightning strikes with hail as big as 3.25" according to the radar scope.

Note the hook echo and the city name "Colony" in the image above and check this storm report, one of two tornado reports in Kansas at this time: "KAKE TV RELAYED REPORT FROM STORM CHASER OF TORNADO ON THE GROUND WEST OF COLONY, KS; THREE TORNADOS COMBINED INTO ONE". Note also the long hail spike to the southwest of the storm, caused when the radar beam (coming from the NE) reflects off of large hail in the storm.

For more on this evening's severe weather outbreaks, see my earlier blog entries. Watch the storm reports tally up below.

StormMatrix Stats Box:

(NOTE: The warnings count will be inaccurate before midnight due to the day ending at 0Z time)