This funnel cloud was seen from near Wells Overlook, south of Lawrence, late Friday afternoon. A tornado warning was briefly issued, but authorities said this and another funnel dissipated before touching down.
A pair of funnel clouds were reported Friday afternoon near Baldwin City, moving east. Early reports suggested the clouds both apparently dissipated without touching down - but the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning, and Douglas County Emergency Management officials later said that at least one had touched down. The warning was lifted at 5:16 p.m.
Raymond and Myrna Ikenberry were making a spaghetti dinner Friday evening when they noticed the sky outside their kitchen window getting murky. When they heard the emergency sirens from Baldwin, they went outside to get a better look.
"We saw a funnel cloud that was bouncing around the clouds, but it never hit the ground," said Myrna, who lives in the 1200 block of North 900 Road, three miles south of Lawrence. "We could see it perfectly from our porch. The funnel kept getting skinnier and skinnier until it disappeared up in the clouds.
The reports came as heavy rain passed through Douglas County, north of Baldwin City. 6News meteorologist Jennifer Schack said the storm moved slowly through the area.
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KsTwister (anonymous) says…
Son has some pics of it on the ground, it was called in by two troopers but National Weather Service radio NEVER said anything about it. So now I consider all microbursts true tornadoes.
Gootsie (anonymous) says…
Katie? Where were you? We could have all died!!!
KsTwister (anonymous) says…
Will post a pic when I get it.
kcwarpony (anonymous) says…
My weather alert radio went off with a Tornado Warning for southern Douglas. Turn on the tv and channel 9 was doing news while channel 5 was reporting the weather...and no Katie! This has to be killin' her, not being there...
nomansland (anonymous) says…
I like that last comment" It was definately a tornado, I'd say an F-1" For one thing if it never touched the ground, it's not a tornado, and secondly it would'nt be classified as anything on the F-scale because of that fact.
notsobright (anonymous) says…
Amazing, I was watching it and since I had never seen a tornado- just wondered. I watched the whole deal for over five minutes. I even called a news station (41) who said nothing was going on. Figured I was out to lunch. Lived here 12 years- that was cool to see.
crazyks (anonymous) says…
They also spotted another funnel 3 miles south of Ottawa. There was a good picture in the Herald of the funnel, looked like it was right over Wal-Mart. A co-worker of mine was in the store at the time, and they herded all the customers to the back of the building.
I was out in the damn stuff, at work at the time, and responsible for a vanload of people. No warnings here. If we hadn't had to stop at the bank, where someone had a TV on, we wouldn't have known.
Although I was pretty sure it was a bad storm when it was raining so hard I could hardly see to drive, and there was so much hail on the pavement (even though it was small) that I slid when I tried to brake.
Weird thing was, there wasn't even any severe weather forecast for Fri., just rain. And it was all moving to the southeast, instead of northeast like usual. The storms were going so fast, by the time they got the warnings out, it was pretty much already past the areas that they mentioned.