WICHITA, Kan. - Tornadoes dropped onto the Great Plains on Thursday after forecasters had warned of a potentially historic outbreak, causing some damage and spooking a pair of circus elephants in Kansas that escaped their enclosure.
The storm apparently frightened the animals, which wandered around the town of WaKeeney, said Trego County Sheriff Richard Schneider. One of the animals remained on the loose Thursday evening.
The other entered a backyard less than a mile from the fairgrounds and was blocked off by fire trucks until trainers could coax it onto a truck, Schneider said.
"I guess it got tired of walking around," Schneider said.
At least four tornadoes touched down in western and central Kansas, where residents nervously braced for what National Weather Service forecasters called a potentially historic outbreak of tornadoes.
A tornado in Clay County in north-central Kansas destroyed a home, damaged several other buildings, and toppled trees and power lines, said sheriff's dispatcher Cat Dallinga. Storms also damaged roofs at the Pratt County airport in south-central Kansas, officials said.
In a strongly worded statement Thursday, the weather service warned that parts of Kansas could see hail bigger than baseballs and "a few strong to violent long-lived tornadoes."
Wichita State University canceled evening classes because of the weather predictions.
Computer forecasting models for Thursday resembled those on June 8, 1974, when 39 tornadoes raked the southern Plains and killed 22 people. The National Weather Service on Tuesday took the unusual step of giving advance warning of a possible tornado outbreak based on the conditions.
Forecasters had said severe thunderstorms would form in Kansas and move toward eastern Kansas, Nebraska, northwestern Missouri and Iowa. Heavy rainfall and flooding were also possible, especially late Thursday night in southeast Kansas.
"The highest risk is central Kansas and the entire central portion of the country," said Brad Mickelson, a weather service meteorologist. "There is a high risk of severe thunderstorms."
Singled out as at high risk were Omaha; Topeka, Kan.; Des Moines, Iowa; and south-central Minnesota, he said. The region at risk of severe thunderstorms stretched from northern Texas to Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Funnel clouds were also reported in Colorado and Nebraska.
Storms on Wednesday soaked the region and then moved across to the mid-Atlantic region. Three deaths were blamed on the storms.
Tornadoes touched down in southern Iowa, causing isolated damage in rural areas. Many rivers flooded.
"The rivers haven't had a chance to go down, and with the heavy rains, they just keep going higher," said Brad Fillbach, another meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Fillbach said Creston, Iowa, which had a brush with a tornado Wednesday evening, had about 6 inches of rain by Thursday morning. Some roads were under 3 feet of water early Thursday.
"The weather has been real active this week. It'll be nice to get a few days to dry out and get these rivers back down," Fillbach said.
In the Washington metro area, Wednesday's storm downed tree lines and power lines, leaving more than 200,000 homes and businesses without electricity Thursday. Some outages could last for several days because of the severity of the damage, Pepco spokesman Bob Dobkin said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080605/ap_on_re_us/severe_weatherIn case one missed it, the greedy thorn primitive, the 8th-grade social studies teacher in Wichita, Kansas--she of the romantic fantasies about the Australian guy, and she with the "drunken" husband--started a bonfire on Skins's island earlier this evening, just before she headed for the basement.
One hopes she let her brother-in-law in, if he was seeking refuge from the tornado.
