Storms produce tornadoes, hail

? A line of strong storms spawned several tornadoes Wednesday night in western Kansas, but damage was limited to storage buildings, power lines, irrigation systems and some livestock, officials said.

Joy Moser, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Division of Emergency Management, said a tornado in rural Grant County north of Ulysses stayed on the ground for 20 to 30 minutes, causing some damage but no injuries before moving north into Finney County.

Moser said between two and four tornadoes were confirmed in that part of the state, most of them around the Ulysses area.

Earlier in the day, severe weather that moved across northeast Kansas and northwest Missouri sent tornado sirens in several communities wailing, but the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill said there were no confirmed twister sightings.

Meteorologist Pat Cooper said golf ball- to baseball-sized hail damaged windows in some homes Wednesday afternoon in Pattonsburg, about 70 miles north of Kansas City. But she said the conditions on the ground below the storm apparently weren’t ripe to produce twisters.

Residents in Kansas and Missouri should expect another round of severe weather today, she said.

“We’re going to have another day of it … with it possibly erupting again by midday,” Cooper said Wednesday night.

In western Kansas, Dodge City meteorologist Mike Bell said the storms that produced several confirmed tornadoes had a history of pulsing, or strengthening, then weakening as they moved north.

The Finney County Sheriff’s Department said at least one tornado was sighted south of Holcomb, but it stayed mainly over farm fields and there were no reports of damage late Wednesday.