...straight-line winds of 100 mph. On my way home from church Sunday, I spotted this huge downed tree a few blocks from my house. So of course I had to pull over, get out, and take pictures. It took out another, smaller tree as it fell. I’ll post other pics of it later.
The evening before, we were watching the weatherman on the CBS affiliate in Topeka tracking a storm coming south from just above the Nebraska border. It looked like it was heading SE through Maryville toward Blue Rapids, and he was warning people in those towns to TAKE COVER NOW. After we'd watched for awhile it appeared it was not coming toward Manhattan, so I went outside for just wee bit to do some digging and pulling up of undesirable stuff in the jungle out back. As I was coming back in the sirens went off and the weather guy was talking about a tornado over Tuttle Creek Reservoir just east of town. We should take cover, so we turned off the computers and headed for the basement, where we sat and read and tried to get the weather guy live-streamed on my phone. Then the power went out and I turned off the phone because the battery was very low. FYI, It is very dark in a windowless basement with no power. So we just sat in the dark, with a few notifications popping up on the phone -- warnings from the university's automated system informing us of what we already knew. When a notification told us there was an all clear from the storm warning, we went upstairs and sat for awhile on the back porch, then went up to bed (carefully, using the flashlight app on the phone). After we went to bed, but before we were asleep, all the lights popped back on and I went down to turn them off. I was grateful for the ceiling fan, because it was hot.
Later it was determined that the considerable damage in Manhattan was caused by straight line winds, not a tornado. Maryville got hit by the tornado. It seems that in the time I was outside, the huge storm system turned away from Blue Rapids and decided instead to come directly south toward Manhattan.
