Severe Thunderstorms and Heavy Rain in the Southern Plains; Fire Weather Threat in the Southwest U.S.

Thunderstorms, some severe, may produce heavy to excessive rainfall and isolated flooding over portions of the Southern Plains today and Saturday. Dry conditions, combined with gusty winds and low relative humidities will continue to support an elevated to critical fire weather threat in the Desert Southwest into to early next week. Read More >

10 Year Anniversary of the
EF-3 Reading and Quenemo Tornado

**May 21, 2021: 10 years ago on this date, several tornadoes impacted portions of Lyon and Osage counties, including an EF-3 tornado that went through the town of Reading, KS. Several homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed within the town. Unfortunately, there was one fatality reported. Since this time, businesses were rebuilt with a new community building and city park. The original web story, photos, and radar images are shared below.**

Several tornadoes touched down across Lyon and Osage Counties Last Saturday evening. The strongest of these was an EF3 tornado that went through Reading, KS. A single story home in Reading was swept off its foundation with several other two story homes suffering significant damage or complete lose of the second story. Later in the night, another tornado developed over Quenemo and touched down on the west side of town destroying a couple structures. In all there where 4 tornados on the evening of the 21st from just north of Emporia to just south of Pomona.

Reflectivity and Storm Relative velocity images of the supercell storms that produced the tornados 21 May 2011

The storm that produced the tornados moved northeast out of Chase County into Lyon County. As it did the thunderstorm moved into a more favorable environment with a moist air mass and increasing low level shear and began rotating near Emporia. The thunderstorm continued to track east and northeast across Osage and Franklin Counties before exiting Franklin County after midnight.