Turbulent clouds and rolling belches of thunder sent many area residents scurrying to their basements late Tuesday afternoon as a thunderstorm moved into the area after 4:30 p.m.
At 5:52 p.m., as a steady heavy rain fell, a spotter reported seeing a funnel cloud four to five miles south-southwest of Olpe, according to Kyle Poage, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Topeka.
“We had no reports of it touching down,” Poage said.
The rainfall during that storm, as well as a second that moved through overnight, left Emporia and the county with widely varying reports of precipitation from residents’ rain gauges.
The weather service reported that 1.66 inches of rain had fallen during the 24-hour period ending this morning. The recording was taken at the Emporia Municipal Airport, the city’s official weather station.
In the city and the surrounding area, however, measurements varied from .7 inch at Madison to an unconfirmed 5 inches a few blocks east of the downtown area.
“I had an even four inches,” said Ken Herrick, 1031 Peyton St.
Herrick said he was awake when the night-time storm moved in.
“It rained hard about 3:30 this morning. It just peppered down,” he said. “There were a couple of (thunder) rattles when one of the cells came over.”
The measurement included rainfall from the afternoon storm.
Less than two blocks south of Herrick’s home, Donna Merwin, 910 Peyton St., found a total of 2.5 inches in her rain gauge.
“That’s a lot of difference,” Merwin said.
West of Peyton, at 921 Market St., Nancy Lawson reported slightly more than four inches of rainfall.
“My tomatoes needed it,” Lawson said.
Her mother, who lives on Woodland Street, recorded three inches, Lawson said.
The city of Hartford received little precipitation, though in a rural area south of Hartford, Connie Wood’s rain gauge held a total of three inches from both storms.
In the northern part of Lyon County, three miles west and one mile north of Americus, Jackie Leffler said his farm still needs rain.
“We didn’t get nothing last night; heavy dew,” Leffler said this morning.
His rain gauge showed .10 inch.
The storms have been missing Leffler’s property much of the summer.
“It comes here and it splits. It goes to the north and the south,” he said. “I got room for another couple of inches if it came down real nice.”
In the city of Olpe, not far from the funnel sighting, about 1.5 inches fell from both storms combined.
“It didn’t appear that we got all that much overnight,” said Olpe City Clerk Joyce Wilson.
Approximately two inches fell at Reading, northeast of Emporia, and about a half-inch at Burlington, east-southeast of here. Tom Wilson of Madison said he received .7 inch of rain at home, and approximately .75 inch fell during the late-afternoon storm at Cottonwood Falls.
At New Strawn, which had been in the line of the cell that produced the funnel for a time, rainfall also was lighter.
Keith Schaller of Indian Plains Grill at New Strawn said he had driven to Emporia Tuesday evening.
“I ran into heavy rain when I got to Emporia, and it rained all the time,” he said, adding that the rain did not cease until he was on his way home.
Rain at New Strawn arrived overnight, and amounted to .86 inch in Schaller’s Weather Channel rain gauge.
“I write down every single drop we get,” Schaller said. “We didn’t get nothing like Emporia had.”
The National Weather Service forecast only a slight chance of showers after 1 p.m. today. Areas of fog were predicted around 4 a.m. Thursday, with mostly sunny skies and a high near 92 expected during the day.