Skip to footer

Midwest forecast: Snow, flooding, hail, and tornadoes

There's a risk of severe thunderstorms Saturday — including tornadoes and large hail — in parts of western Kansas, western Colorado, and the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles.  Parts of South Dakota could receive as much as a foot of snow, says National Weather Service.

  • By Staff Associated Press

| Oklahoma City

Oklahoma and other Great Plains states were bracing Saturday for more severe weather.

The National Weather Service says there's a risk of severe thunderstorms Saturday — including possible tornadoes and large hail — in parts of western Kansas, western Colorado, and the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles.

"We're going to see storms that present the risk of a full gamut of severe weather," National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Lindley said.

Threatening skies stretched beyond the Plains states, as twin weather systems stretching from the Carolinas to California produced an unseasonably early tropical storm in the Atlantic and a late-season snowstorm in the Rocky Mountains.

Up to 5 inches of snow was possible in the Nebraska Panhandle, and parts of South Dakota could receive as much as a foot, according to the weather service.

Heavy rains on Friday night caused some flooding in Oklahoma. In Shawnee, the Red Cross opened a shelter because officials said a Granada Lake dam was close to being topped after heavy rains, threatening homes in one neighborhood. Officials also closed some roads, including part of Interstate 44 in Tulsa.

Earlier this week, powerful storms rumbled through the southern Plains, producing more than 50 tornadoes and dropping 7.1 inches in Oklahoma City on Wednesday — the third-heaviest rainfall for any day on record dating back to 1890, state climatologist Gary McManus said.

David Wheeler and his family retreated underground to a small shelter several times this week. Two years ago, a top-of-the-scale twister tore a miles-long path through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore and turned Wheeler's son's school to rubble. The family now regularly drills on what to do if the skies turn ominous.

"We've done some dry runs before the spring. I made the kids go down there by themselves, and we've done the same thing with me, the wife and the kids, all together," Wheeler, a fifth-grade teacher whose family has survived two deadly tornadoes, said Friday.

Wheeler and his family are not the only ones who sought extra protection after the 2013 tornado that killed 24 people, including seven children who died in an elementary school.

In the two years since, the city has issued more than 3,000 storm shelter permits. City officials estimate that about 40 percent of homes in Moore now have shelters, spokeswoman Deidre Ebrey said.

___

Associated Press writer Sean Murphy contributed to this report.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Midwest forecast: Snow, flooding, hail, and tornadoes
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2015/0509/Midwest-forecast-Snow-flooding-hail-and-tornadoes
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe