Lawrence Area Storms Bring 85-Mile-Per-Hour Winds — Live Tornado Tracker
Overnight storms on Monday night sent a live tornado tracker into use across eastern Kansas as rain, high winds and tornado warnings moved through Douglas County. A personal weather station monitored by the National Weather Service recorded 85-mile-per-hour winds four miles southwest of downtown Lawrence.
Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical said crews responded to more than 20 weather-related incidents beginning around 8:45 p.m. Monday. A home in the Pinkney neighborhood just north of Fifth and Maine streets was damaged when a large tree fell into it, and crews were on scene Tuesday morning to remove debris.
Lawrence Wind and Rain
Kyle Poage, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said the personal weather station that recorded the highest wind reading was located four miles southwest of downtown Lawrence. The total rainfall on Monday evening ranged from one-tenth of an inch to half an inch in Lawrence, and the National Weather Service received no hail reports for the Lawrence area.
The weather service office in Topeka has been gathering data from its service region after Monday's storms. That data gives the clearest measure so far of how hard the system hit Lawrence, where the strongest reading came from the southwest side of town rather than the downtown core.
North Lawrence Power Loss
The majority of the incidents were electrical in nature, Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical said in a press release after Monday night's storms. A portion of North Lawrence, generally north of Lyon Street, was without power for an extended period on Monday night and Tuesday morning.
The outages reached beyond homes and neighborhoods. The Journal-World's offices in the I-70 Business Center lost power about 9:30 p.m. Monday and were still without it at least 3 a.m. Tuesday morning.
For Lawrence residents, the immediate concern is not the storm warnings themselves but the combination of tree damage, electrical calls and power loss that kept crews busy into Tuesday. The weather service's wind and rainfall readings, along with the fire department's incident count, now show where the worst conditions concentrated and which parts of the city still had the most visible fallout Monday night.
